The Nine Broken Mirrors
by Ayien
Summary: When Suna attacks, Naruto and Gaara must abandon Konoha, find the other jinchuuriki, and unlock the secrets of the Village of Shadows, or all is lost. But it is only six years later, when Konoha comes demanding help, that the last Great War begins.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This chapter, like all the others, was betaed by AisCrim. I do not own Naruto. The only things I own are the plot and the original characters._  
_

* * *

_They made up their minds and they started packing  
They left before the sun came up that day  
An exit to eternal summer slacking  
But where were they going without ever knowing the way?_  
- 'The Way' by Fastball

* * *

Naruto Uzumaki lay prone on the forest floor, completely empty of chakra, watching Gaara stare back at him, defeated and bloody for the first time in his life. Black dots buzzed around the edges of his vision, the pain in his body almost beyond bearing, breath shuddering in his lungs, bubbling from his lips in a pinkish froth.

::_Uzumaki._:: A voice, deeper than the ocean and rumbling like an earthquake, spoke inside his head, blood-red chakra sparking across the inside of his eyelids as he closed them, well-aware of the speaker.

'_What, Kyuubi? I'm a little busy right now!_'

::_No, you're not, you're lying around on the ground as if you're dead. Which I would _love_ to see, you realize. But we have bigger problems. Come to the cage._:: Naruto's fingers clenched in the dirt, broken nails dragging and tearing free of his skin.

"Don't wanna," he mumbled to the empty air, the words tearing at his throat.

::_If you want your friends to live long, happy lives, you will._:: His eyes flew open. '_What? What do you mean? You going to try to hurt them or something?' _

::_As much as it pains me to admit… no. Will you just take my word for it and come here?_::

Naruto sighed.

'_Fine.'_

* * *

The air was cold and wet, beads of water clinging to his eyelashes, the water around his knees sloshing with each pained step he took towards the heavy gates looming ahead, stretching up into the darkness.

Red chakra drifted around the bars like living flame, hissing and crackling the closer he got. Water dripped from the pipes set into the walls, the white seals up ahead the only spot of light in the gloom. He finally reached the gates and yelled into the darkness beyond the gates, "Hey, furball! What's with you threatening my friends?"

There was the sound of scythe-like claws ticking against the earth beyond. Two red, slit eyes loomed from the darkness, full of wicked cunning and eerie intelligence. Nine tails writhed sinuously around each other, blood-red and fiery. The demon's tongue lolled from its fanged jaws in a gaping grin.

"You came. Good."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. What's the deal with you and my friends?"

The Kyuubi came closer, a paw pressing idly at the bars.

"Nothing. I needed to get you here, and threatening them was the most expedient way."

Naruto snorted, folding his arms behind his head. "Fine. Don't do it again. What'd you want me for, anyway?"

The demon sobered, ears flattening against its back as it laid down, its blood-red eyes tired. "Kitsune, such as I, receive the power to see the future when we gain our ninth tail. Sometimes, in the web that contains the infinite futures, there is a point where you reach a crossroads, a place that contains only two choices."

Naruto rocked back and forth, fingers drumming on his wrist. "Uh-huh. And?"

The Kyuubi bared its teeth in a snarl, blasting breath as hot as volcanic magma, tinged with the acrid smell of chakra. "Listen to me, you pestilent brat! There are greater things than your miserable attention span at work here! We have reached a crossroads, and the choice you make at this point is more important than you know. One choice will lock you and your friends into a path leading to your inevitable deaths. The other, while carrying with it great personal cost and pain, will leave you and your friends free within the web, still able to make your own choices."

Naruto stilled, brought his arms down, and took a step forward.

"What's in it for you?"

The demon's lip curled. "If you make the wrong choice, you will one day be captured by a group known as Akatsuki. You will kill them and die, and I will die with you, never having had the chance to escape."

"Okay. And how much of a chance do you have now?"

A flash of white, knife-like fangs. "More than you know."

Naruto turned away from the red eyes, pacing through the water, before whipping around and staring defiantly up at the demon. "So what're my choices, then?"

The Kyuubi grinned.

"Abandon Konoha, become a missing-nin-" the Kyuubi ignored Naruto's sputters of protest, "- and take the Shukaku vessel with you. Collect the other seven jinchuuriki. I will then guide you to a village hidden in the southern jungle, a village where all your needs will be met, and Akatsuki will never find you." The Kyuubi shrugged its massive shoulders. "I can see nothing more of your future after the arrival in the Village of Shadows."

"Sounds creepy. And the other?"

Red chakra gathered in front of him, congealing into a web with so many strands that it appeared solid. The web stretched from one side of the tunnel to the other, so large that the top end disappeared into the darkness. "The web of futures," the Kyuubi said gravely, tails flicking.

"You make the choice to stay." Several strands suddenly lit up, gleaming silver, spiraling out from the center of the web. "Touch the strand. You will see several scenes from that future."

Naruto bit his lip, glanced up at the demon, and finally reached out, fingers brushing across a strand, humming with tension.

_Sasuke's brother- Itachi, murderer of the clan, missing-nin, member of Akatsuki- stands with his hand around Sasuke's throat, his red eyes glinting as he whispers, "Tsukiyomi." Sasuke- harsh, uncaring, silent Sasuke- screams, the sound as sharp and keen as a knife trailing over stone._

_A woman- Tsunade, granddaughter of the First Hokage, blonde and beautiful and burdened- stands in the robes of the Hokage, a new leader for the village._

_There is rain on his face, and Sasuke's hand is full of the light of Chidori, and they fight, savage and focused, one to leave and one to make him stay, and suddenly the Chidori is in his shoulder. He screams, and falls, and when he wakes, bleeding, alone, to the rain on his face, he pretends that he isn't crying._

_Gaara is Kazekage, and dead from the Akatsuki's lust for power. He howls, and forces chakra down dead, cold pathways to the unbeating heart. Gaara coughs blood, and inhales into dusty lungs the breath of life. He helps him to sit up, and Gaara takes his hand, and smiles._

_Orochimaru is dead by Sasuke's hand, the man he can no longer call his best friend long gone, returning to the shadows he had chosen. _

_Kakashi dies first, Sakura second. He finds them, killed by Sasuke's hand, together, hands linked and fingers tangled, the last bond of comradeship. Kakashi's eye socket is wet, and red, and ruined, and the Sharingan that has burdened him his whole life long is gone. Sakura is smiling. _

_Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji - he finds them floating in the Nakano River, the still waters tinged with blood. Fallen by Itachi's hand in his quest for the Kyuubi, black fire still burns on their bones. Regarded as second-rate genin, the team of misfits, they still proved themselves worthy as ninja, for Kisame's torn body floats beside them._

_Deidara kills Hinata. Neji dies beside her, chakra drained from pumping it into a body whose spirit has already ascended, and at his death Tenten and Lee go berserk, and their bodies twist apart and uncoil in an explosion of clay and shrapnel. Kiba and Akamaru fall to Tobi's knife, the blade through them both, pinning them together, even in death. Shino survives. He kills himself that same day. _

_Konoha falls a year later, the streets slick with blood and bone, littered with the bodies of Sound-nin and Leaf-nin both. The Hokage Mountain has cracked down the center, and Tsunade lies atop them with her fist through Kabuto's chest. Naruto stands in the gates. He has arrived too late. Sound and Leaf destroyed each other in a final conflagration, two of the last great shinobi villages wiped off the map in a war that has only truly lasted a week. He falls to his knees, and weeps._

_Naruto finds the Akatsuki's headquarters. He sees Sasuke's head impaled above the entrance, and feels nothing for his old friend, who has failed in the quest he sacrificed everything for. The Akatsuki rush him, and he just… lets himself go. Red chakra leaks from every pore in his body, blood puddles around his feet, and the Akatsuki finally die screaming. _

_He drags himself from their home, and lies on the rocky ground underneath a red dawn, a creature of flesh and bone that cannot be called human, lipless, skinless, his skin and his clothes incinerated, and dies._

Naruto jerked away from the web, staggered to a corner, fell to his hands and knees, and threw up into the water, the acrid taste burning his tongue and his nose as he heaved, his body shuddering, fingers clenching in the muck.

"So you see," the Kyuubi said with implacable calmness, "what you must do." Naruto blinked eyes stinging with tears and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, staring down into the murky water, his clothing wet and heavy and clinging to his skin. He bowed his head and exhaled in a long sigh, breath clouding in the frigid air, his hair clammy.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. But I don't- I don't want the village to hate me! I don't want to give up my dream of becoming Hokage, 'cause that's all I've _got_." He pushed himself to his feet and turned burning eyes to Kyuubi, who met his gaze with eyes as old as the earth.

"Then you, and the village you love so dearly, will perish."

Naruto sloshed closer, clenched his fists around the bars, feeling the burning, chakra-laden breath stir his hair. "Give me another way!"

"There is no other way."

He fell to his knees in the water and leaned his head against the bars, fingers blistering in the heat.

"It is not," the Kyuubi continued, "as if I want to spend any time around the other demons. We despise each other. But this is the only way to prevent my own death, and yours as well."

"Are you sure?"

The Kyuubi snarled, tails lashing in irritation. "Yes! Yes, damn it, I'm sure, and I wish I wasn't, because I hate you and all your kind, and to see your friends live another day is almost more than I can bear!" A clawed paw smashed against the gates, the metal bars shuddering in Naruto's hands.

"You must go," the demon said, "now. The Akatsuki have become aware of your existence. They are on their way here. Take the vessel of Shukaku, and flee. Once you've escaped all pursuit from Konoha, I will direct you to the jinchuuriki." Naruto pulled himself upright, and stared up into red, fathomless eyes.

"Kyuubi?"

"Yeah, what?"

Naruto smiled, saluted mockingly.

"Thanks."

The demon spat, the phlegm fiery and hissing as it hit the water, steam boiling around it. "Didn't do it for you, fleshbag. Did it for me."

"Still," he insisted, "thanks."

* * *

He opened his eyes, and shoved himself to his feet, his shaking steps drawing him closer to where Gaara lay.

"Hey, Gaara."

His knees shook and gave out, and he collapsed to the ground. Gaara's black-rimmed eyes flicked over to meet his, bloody mouth parting in silent question. Naruto held himself up with scraped hands, speaking quickly and quietly, trying to impress the seriousness of their situation on the other vessel.

"The Kyuubi- the demon in me- it says I've got to leave Konoha and take you with me to get the other jinchuuriki together so we can all go live in an abandoned village or something, but that'd make you a missing-nin too, and will you go with me anyway?"

He took a deep breath. Gaara blinked, spoke, his voice as soft as the rustle of leaves, his throat dry and sore.

"I would not be a missing-nin. Suna would be all-too-pleased to see me gone."

Naruto smiled, and felt bad for doing so, because that was awful, the idea that your own village wouldn't want you. '_Although it makes things easier for him._' He cast a glance over his shoulder, eyes welling as he saw the walls of Konoha, walls that he must leave, and not come back to, ever.

A village, and the dream that sustained him all his life, that he must abandon, to save his friends- the friends who would hate him for it.

"So- so you'll come with me?"

Gaara turned to stare back up at the darkening sky, his face still and thoughtful. '_Well- we're both jinchuuriki. Maybe he wants to meet the others, so he won't feel so alone?_'

"Yes."

"Wait- what?"

Gaara rolled his eyes to glare at him. "I said I would. I dislike repeating myself." Naruto punched his fist into his other palm in triumph, wincing. '_Not a good idea._'

"Hey, kid!" Pakkun's gravelly voice made him turn, the small pug staring up at him with small black eyes. "We've got to get out of here and take your friends to the medical-nins. You can leave Psycho here for his village to pick up." Naruto ran his fingers through his hair, bit the inside of his lip.

"Pakkun, I-" he looked back at the walls of Konoha, warm and welcoming and golden in the sunlight, home and family and love and safety and everything he would abandon. But the memory of Sakura's smiling, dead face, and Hinata's still body spurred him on. "I can't go back to Konoha. I have to leave." He forced down the wail rising in his throat, the tears at the corner of his eyes. "I'm sorry. Tell Kakashi and the others-" he choked on a sob, "tell them I had to do it, to keep them safe. Tell them I love them, and I'm sorry."

And then, before he could talk himself out of it, he reached out and smacked the dog over the back of his head, making Pakkun disappear in a puff of smoke. '_Kyuubi, I need some energy. I can't get out of the borders alone!_'

::_Fine. Leave your hitai-ate here._:: Naruto shook his head. '_I'll leave Konoha behind, but I won't leave my hitai-ate. Ever._' He felt, more than heard, Kyuubi's sigh, but the demon provided him with energy anyway, the red chakra blooming on his skin and repairing the tears and abrasions.

Naruto leaped to his feet, reached down and hauled Gaara upright, slinging the other vessel's arm over his shoulders. Gaara finally spoke again.

"Where are we going?" Naruto began to move, leaping from branch to branch, feeling the energy boost he had from Kyuubi rapidly draining away. "We've got to get out of Konoha's borders, and then we can decide which village to go to next. Do you know of any other jinchuuriki?"

"No."

"Okay--", his throat was clogged with tears, "Okay, then."

He left Konoha behind, ignored the tears streaming down his face, ignored the voice inside him howling for him to return, to forget the future, forget the Akatsuki, forget that Sasuke would one day betray them, but he couldn't-

To save the village he loved more than life, he would have to leave it.

Konoha's walls receded, and Naruto didn't look back.

* * *

**A/N:** Review, please? 


	2. Chapter 2

'_Let me run  
Let me run  
Let me ride the crest of chance into the sun  
You were always there  
But you may lose me here  
Now love me if you dare  
And let me run_'  
- Undertow by Pain of Salvation

* * *

"Hey, Gaara?" Naruto looked over at his companion – he couldn't call him 'friend', not yet-, scratching at one of his many insect bites. '_Only a week's travel, and I've got thirty already,_' he moaned. The other jinchuuriki looked over at him, the skin of his brow wrinkling.

"Yes?" He gestured at Gaara's gourd, "Well, I was just thinking that, you know, we want to stay incognito so Akatsuki doesn't find us, and the gourd- and it's really awesome and cool and don't kill me for this- well, it's not really incognito." He grinned nervously. "Soo… is there, like, another way you can carry the sand with you?"

Gaara folded his arms across his new shirt- they had traded their old clothing in for nondescript brown cotton trousers and shirts at the last town, the better to hide with- and sighed, "It would be feasible to compress it into the form of a bag, but the redistribution of chakra necessary to do so would be aggravating. Are you sure this will help?"

"Yep!"

Gaara's gourd dissolved and took the shape of a traveling bag, the strap over his shoulder. It was still brown, and anybody who took a second look would know that it wasn't a normal bag, but it was better than roaming around with a giant peanut strapped to his back.

"Awesome!"

Gaara grunted something uncomplimentary.

"What?"

"I said I don't like the trees. It makes it too difficult to ascertain our position in relation to the road."

Naruto looked around at the thick pines, the mossy rocks, the loamy forest floor carpeted with pine needles, the scant light filtering in through the canopy. "What road?"

Gaara stared at him. "Exactly."

He shrugged, put his arms behind his head, and started to walk backwards, watching cardinals zip about overhead in bright streaks of color. The temperature was cool, and the air thinner. They had found a hot spring yesterday when they crossed the border into the Land of Lightning and stayed there overnight, so now Naruto felt great and energized, ready to tackle the mountains he could see rising ahead, crags capped with snow.

"Well, I like it, Mister Grumpypants, so you can just deal with it!"

Gaara blinked.

"Mister-" he stiffened, tilted his head, and stilled. Naruto stopped. '_Shit. Shitshitshit. Did they- they couldn't have, I'm not that important!_' The forest was still, silent but for their breathing, and darkening fast.

A cloud of birds rose, screeching, a few hundred yards away. He stuffed down the urge to scream his frustration and turned to Gaara, grabbing his hand and sprinting for the mountains.

They ran together, breaths puffing out in small clouds of steam, trying to be quiet and failing miserably, feet scrabbling against the rocks underfoot. He pulled his hand from Gaara's, and mustered enough chakra for a few shadow clones, too winded to even give them their orders, settling for directing them with jerks of his head, and luckily they understood, breaking from him and fading back into the woods behind them.

The trees began to thin, the ground becoming rockier with every step. Gaara began to slow, coughing, the years of only spending time training his ninjutsu finally catching up. The sound was harsh and crackling, his shoulder shuddering under Naruto's hand. Naruto stood helplessly on the edge of the woods, glancing about for a place to hide, swallowing, his throat and mouth dry with fear and his heart pounding in his ears. The forest held their pursuers, and there was nowhere to hide on the bare mountainside.

He felt his three clones disappear, and knew who had pursued them. Knew, and cursed Konoha for it, because he couldn't hate them. Gaara straightened, glanced at him. Their conversation was wordless, spoken only with body language. Naruto figured that probably meant something- that jinchuuriki were great with unspoken communication, or that he and Gaara had a really great relationship- but he was too tired and afraid to contemplate.

"Will you be all right?" Gaara said, placing a cold, thin hand on his shoulder. He took a deep breath, tried to laugh, the sound coming out only as a sob. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll be okay." He blinked. "Don't want to do this, though."

::_It was inevitable,_:: the Kyuubi said.

'_Don't suppose you'll offer me any help?_'

A snort of derision and the feeling of fangs bared in a mocking smile.

::_Only a small amount. You must deal with this on your own. I must conserve my energy for the trials we will face at Kumogakure_.::

'_What-_' and then there was no time for thinking anymore as their pursuers emerged from the pines.

Team Seven- he thought maybe he shouldn't call them that, since they weren't a team anymore, would never be again- stared across the empty space, their eyes wide, their clothes ragged and torn.

It hurt to see them, hurt deep down inside, as if he had been stabbed in the gut or gotten a Chidori through the chest. But he didn't cry, and he was thankful for that. He couldn't have faced them if he cried, couldn't have kept his resolve.

He tried, weakly, to smile, and only succeeded halfway, lifting a hand in greeting.

"Hi."

Sasuke moved first, hurling himself at Naruto, his blood-red Sharingan eyes whirling furiously and kunai clutched in his hands. Sakura threw herself between them, held Sasuke back with shaking hands, her dress flapping in the cold wind howling down from the mountains.

"Fucking idiot," Sasuke snarled, struggling against Sakura's grip, teeth bared and voice cracking with pain. Kakashi came up beside them both, glancing at Sasuke.

"Sasuke, calm yourself. We can resolve this through diplomatic means."

Sasuke stilled, and finally hung limply from Sakura's arms, his anger spent and replaced with hurt just barely glimpsed through the wall surrounding his emotions. Kakashi turned to gaze at Naruto, only to see him shake his head.

"No, Kakashi-sensei." He was faintly surprised at how resigned his voice sounded, at how many years it had gained. "We can't resolve this at all, unless you let me go."

"Let- let you _go_?" Sakura said, her eyes wide with betrayal, her voice shaking. "We won't! Please-" her voice cracked, welling with the sound of tears, "please come back." She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, "Konoha needs you. _We_ need you!"

"If you come back now, all will be forgiven," Kakashi said, "your desertion will be deleted from records, and there won't be any punishment." He took a step forward, holding out a hand, his voice softer, "Is this… about your tenant in some way?"

Naruto's hands curled into fists. Not trusting himself to speak- he would cry, or wail, or say something that totally compromised his mission- he nodded. Kakashi's hand dropped to his side.

"Ah." He sounded completely unsurprised. "You do realize, don't you, that Konoha won't ever just let you go? You're far too valuable a pawn." Rage boiled up from his belly at the words, made his head ring and his vision blur with red. He was dimly aware of his teeth grinding against each other, and the far-away pain of his nails splitting skin, but that meant nothing.

"I am _not_-" he gritted out, feeling his muscles stretch tight as bowstrings, humming with energy, "Konoha's toy, and I'm not going to be called a pawn! Why don't you understand?" He was shouting now, his voice hoarse and shuddering with pain, "I _have _to do this! I have to, and I hate it, but it's the only way I can keep the village safe!"

Kakashi bore his words silently, and finally sighed. "Very well." He reached up and tilted his headband, the Sharingan eye appearing. Sakura let Sasuke go, and the Uchiha joined Kakashi, his gaze intent.

"Gaara." The other jinchuuriki appeared at his side, sand layering itself onto his skin, forming the beginnings of a tail. "How fast can you transform?"

"Three minutes," Gaara slurred from a mouth already distending with fangs that were larger than his own hand, one of his eyes the yellow, spinning pinwheel of Shukaku. Naruto nodded thoughtfully and sank into a combat stance.

'_Kyuubi?_' He felt the seal itch and burn, felt the skin surrounding it peel away, and red chakra suddenly flamed on his skin, as hot as the sun, his brain screaming with the pain as he took one step, then another, and launched himself at his former teammates.

His nails lengthened, jaw aching and splintering as it expanded to fit the fangs that grew, his knuckles pounding the earth as he closed, his speed suddenly breathtaking. Sasuke met him, and they collided in a roar of chakra and pain.

A kunai sank to the hilt in his shoulder, but the flesh healed immediately, the blade falling free to land in Naruto's hand, the heat of demonic chakra scalding his hand, the metal red-hot. Sasuke's hand curled in his shirt, the stench of charred flesh invading his nose as his friend struggled to hold on.

And he didn't know if it was Kyuubi, or his anger and his fear, but everything that made these people his friends was gone, obliterated in a rush of fury, and all he saw in them anymore was 'enemy'.

Enemies that must be neutralized, must be defeated, must die if necessary to remove those that threatened his goal.

The world was gone, and all that existed was their harsh breaths and the feeling of a kunai in his hand. Sasuke was growling, low in his throat, even as cooked flesh bubbled on his bones. Stupid, _stupid _Sasuke, so stubborn even when he knew that he was beaten!

Naruto flipped the kunai around- Kyuubi's voice thundered in his head, a welter of blood and heat and agony, urging him on- and buried it in Sasuke's ribs, the blade sinking in as cleanly as a hot knife through butter. Sasuke grunted, the sound low and vaguely shocked, curling around the injury, his grip loosening.

An opportunity.

Horrid laughter tore from his throat- he knew, deep down inside, what he had just done, and felt guilty and ashamed and ready to weep- as he buried his hands in Sasuke's clothes and threw him across the clearing with as little effort as it took to twitch a finger. The Uchiha hit the ground and skidded, the blood-red of Sharingan fading from his eyes.

Sakura ran to him, lifted his head and pulled the kunai free. Naruto was careful not to look at her, so he wouldn't see the horrible betrayal on her face. He glanced over his shoulder at Gaara, whose transformation was halfway done, and jerked his head. The jinchuuriki understood.

Sand flew from him, coiled around Sakura and Sasuke, imprisoning them and trapping their hands by their sides, preventing them from performing any seals. Sasuke bucked, ink-black whorls spreading across his skin, teeth grinding together as he struggled. Gaara's slavering mouth curled in something like a smile as he stalked closer, the only remnants of his human form his blood-red hair and dragging feet.

"Stop struggling," Gaara said, glancing at them before dismissing them with a flick of his tail. That only made Sasuke angrier, made him twist further, snarling unceasingly, clawing at the dirt with his fingers as his skin bubbled with black ink, something that looked horribly like wings bulging against Gaara's sand from his shoulderblades.

There was a premonition of danger, and Naruto turned his head just in time to avoid Kakashi's fist, the metal plate on his teacher's glove scraping the skin off his cheek as it passed by, the steel melting into quicksilver drops that burned through the thin cloth of Kakashi's glove with evil little snaps and hisses.

His hand shot up, gripped Kakashi's wrist, feeling the thin bones grind against each other, and he twisted in an attempt to throw him. It failed, and Kakashi planted a fist in his stomach.

White sparks exploded behind his eyes, the world tilting on its axis as he bent over Kakashi's arm, coughing. He felt Kakashi's hand coil in the back of his shirt-

A brown blur flew across his field of vision, and he felt Kakashi's hand leave him. He turned, staggered, fell to his knees, staring through blurred eyes as Gaara- fully transformed, an eight-foot-tall demonic shell- wrapped Kakashi in his arms, a low, hollow laugh rumbling in his chest, yellow pinwheel eyes spinning crazily.

His head dropped as Kyuubi's chakra dissipated, feeling too tired and drained to do anything more than hold himself up with trembling hands.

Splish.

Splish.

He blinked, stared at the blood dripping from his lip, then slowly turned his eyes to his hands. '_Ew_.' His skin was charred black and peeling, bleeding from a thousand little cracks spanning his hands like a river's tributaries. He tried to move his fingers, and winced, tears springing to his eyes as blood flowed afresh.

'_Note to self: don't use Kyuubi's chakra again._' His limbs gave out and he collapsed to the dirt, watching with exhausted eyes as Gaara absorbed Kakashi's Chidori without a flinch, the sand drawing his teacher's hand in.

A crack like the splintering of dry twigs filled the air, and Kakashi grunted, jerking back. His hand appeared, trailing sand, the pink-white sticks of his metacarpals thrusting through the skin like claws.

Gaara bared his teeth, tilting his head in fiendish question. "Ready to give up?" He leered, adding, "I can break the other hand, too." One heavy arm lashed out, caught Kakashi around the throat, lifted him in the air.

"Or…" Gaara's eyes spun faster, ears flattening and tail lashing, "I can break you." His tongue lolled with glee, "I can grind your bones to dust and destroy your name forever." Kakashi's working hand clenched on the clawed talons around his throat, scrabbling against the sand, mouth gasping.

Naruto tried to speak, but only managed to make a whispery noise, his jaw popping and shrinking back to its normal size, the skin of his face cracking apart with every move he made. Gaara heard it nonetheless, and turned his head to stare.

There was nothing of Gaara in those yellow pinwheel eyes, nothing but madness and a fury so deep that it could swallow the world. He made the pathetic noise again, and Gaara blinked, once, twice, his expression clearing.

"Uzumaki." Sanity returned. "What do you wish for me to do with him?" Naruto tried to stand, fell back down, limbs watery and useless. He swallowed, licked at bleeding lips.

"Bind him. Leave him with Sakura and Sasuke." Gaara nodded. Sand bound Kakashi, even tighter than the others, and Gaara placed him between Sakura and Sasuke, the sand sloughing off his skin and reforming itself into his bag. The smaller boy came up beside Naruto, helped him to his feet.

Naruto leaned heavily on Gaara, bleeding from new cracks with every move he made, and took a few steps toward his team. Only they weren't his team anymore, they were nothing now but his enemy, obstacles on his quest to protect them and Konoha. He fell to his knees before them, stared into Sasuke's black eyes, rimmed with tears.

And that was the worst.

"I'm sorry." A pathetic apology, one that couldn't make up for a fraction of what he had done, and they both knew it. "I'm so sorry." He took a hitching breath, eyes burning with tears.

"It- it has to be this way."

"_Why_?" Sakura's voice, anguished and breaking, full of pain and sorrow. "Why can't you come back? We- we _love_ you!" Naruto looked down.

"I know. I know you do."

"I'm going to kill you one day," Sasuke gritted out. "I'm going to hunt you down and I'm going to kill you, but before you die- before you die, you fucking liar- you're going to tell me why you left us."

The 'left me' remained unspoken. Naruto raised his head, tried to smile. "Promise, bastard?"

"Yeah." Sasuke's eyes were fierce with truth, "Yeah, I promise."

"You still have your hitai-ate," Sakura said in a small voice, "and as long as you have that, you're still part of Konoha." Naruto blinked.

Then he reached up, untied it, ignoring Sakura's soft moans of 'No, no, no, no,' and Sasuke's frantic 'stop it, stop what you're doing,' and placed it on the ground before them.

"There." His voice cracked with unshed tears. "There. You won't have to hunt me anymore." His hands curled into fists. "You- you won't have to love me anymore." And he stood, turned, and walked away.

Their cries faded into the distance as Gaara helped him to ascend the mountain with halting steps.

That night, he sat next to Gaara, his companion now, and felt Kyuubi's inexorable presence, which he had known all his life and always would in his future, and he finally cried for everything he had lost, losing himself in the sensation of being infinitely alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Thanks to everyone who has reviewed! I'm very flattered you like the story. This chapter, as others, was betaed by AisCrim.

* * *

_Tell me the one about the hand that holds you down  
Because the bruise on your face, it always seems to stay around  
And tell me the one about the hand that holds you down  
Because you seem to be lost, with no intention to be found_  
- 'Left Out' by Shinedown

* * *

The road through the mountain pass was narrow, twisty, and blocked in several places with snow that slid down from the high crags every morning. The sky was a blank, featureless gray, promising nothing except more cold drizzle; there were rivers every mile that ran clear down to the black northern oceans; there weren't any animals or any trees. They hadn't even seen any merchants!

Naruto finally couldn't keep quiet anymore. "God, this country sucks! It's so _depressing_!"

Gaara, walking beside him, glanced over at him. "It has more to look at than the desert."

Naruto frowned, folded his arms behind his head, and winced as his newly-healed skin protested.

"Yeah, I guess, but I mean, couldn't they have built a village- I don't know- by the sea or something?"

"Cities on floodplains rarely succeed, and it would be too difficult to defend against enemy attack."

"Well, it was just a question," Naruto sulked.

Gaara's voice was flat. "It was an asinine question."

"Okay, first, I don't even know what asinine means, and second-" Naruto skidded to a stop, "-_wow_."

The Village Hidden in the Clouds stretched out beneath them, cupped inside the bowl valley of the mountains around it. The black cliffs stretched up towards the sky, flat and dangerous-looking, and the roads- laid out in the shape of a grid- were white and ridiculously clean. The Raikage's tower, carved out of one of the cliffs, loomed like an evil black giant over the gray houses below. White mist drifted around the village, wreathing it in fog.

But- he blinked, looked harder.

"Gaara?"

"I see it," Gaara said, voice humming with tension. There was no one in the village, the streets all empty, the houses devoid of light. Only the Raikage's tower showed any sign of light, surrounded by banners that flapped in the breeze. A blue light poured from the highest level, sapphire and glowing in a way that looked horribly unnatural.

"What do you think? Go down there or not?" He looked at Gaara, who stood there, head tilted, immovable as stone. Gaara finally blinked, shook himself, and said,

"This unnatural occurrence could be related to the jinchuuriki we are searching for. I think we should at least find out what is going on, and then decide our course of action from there."

"Okay," Naruto agreed, moving to the edge of the road and looking down the sheer cliff-face below them, four thousand feet of black rock separating them from their goal. The road wound in a spiral around the edge of the bowl that held the village. He chewed on his lower lip, then brightened. '_That could work! It'd be fun, too_.'

With a puff of smoke, forty clones formed behind him, all bouncing on their toes in anticipation, before they dove over the edge of the cliff and formed a line, all sticking to the rock face with the chakra on the bottom of their feet. Naruto grinned, bounded to Gaara, and slung an arm around Gaara's thin shoulders.

"Hey, Gaara, trust me?"

Gaara folded his arms, his expression grave. "Why do you ask?"

Naruto nudged him in the side. "Well, I've got a way to get down to the village a lot faster than running around and around the side of the caldera."

Gaara's brow wrinkled. "You know the word 'caldera?'"

"I'm not an idiot, okay! So. Fast way?"

Gaara shrugged. "Very well."

Naruto grabbed him tighter and ran for the edge, leaping off and into space. Gaara was silent, but his arm tightened around Naruto's neck, cutting off his yell of excitement.

A clone, standing horizontally on the surface of the cliff, caught him by the back of his shirt and slowed them down, tossing them to the next clone in line before disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

"When I am able to stand again," Gaara said flatly, his words nearly lost in the howl of wind, his eyes half-closed and sand whipping about and smacking Naruto in the face, "I am going to kill you, and it will not be quick."

"Urk!" Naruto replied as they fell another hundred feet, a clone catching them and slowing their fall again. They continued to descend the cliff face, leaving the smoke of exploded shadow clones behind them, the black rock scraping against Naruto's shoes as it rushed away beside them.

'_I really should have thought this through better_.'

It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, made worse by the snow flakes stinging his skin and Gaara's arm wrapped firmly in a stranglehold around his neck. But it was better than walking another ten miles in a circle just to get down to the bottom of the bowl so they could check out the creepy light.

His collar ripped as the last clone's hand coiled in the back of his shirt and lowered them the five feet to earth, the deadened grass crunching underfoot. Gaara let him go, stepped a few feet away, and threw up into the stream that ran around the outer edge of the caldera.

"You okay?" Naruto didn't step closer, well-aware of Gaara's love for indiscriminate violence. Gaara finally stopped heaving, stood up, and wiped his mouth. "Fine," he said tonelessly.

"Great!" Naruto looked around. Even the area outside the village was gray and colorless, the grass brown and dead from cold, the circle of sky above flat and boring, the black cliff beside them completely smooth. There was complete silence, except for the quiet burbling of the stream and their breathing.

It was deathly boring, but more than that, it was horribly creepy. No color, no animals, no plants, nothing but the rock and the stream and the ever-present white mist that coiled around their feet and hid the village from view.

It seemed as if they were all alone in the world, as if they were the last two people alive. "Ready to go?" Gaara nodded, and they began to walk. The grass changed to gravel that crunched with each step, and the wall receded, until the only thing around them was the mist that churned like the surface of a lake on a windy day. And sometimes, when the mist parted, he thought that he could see faces distorted with rage leering at them from the gaps.

The walls surrounding the village stretched up before them, a long white arc of stone that seemed to extend into infinity, with no one patrolling the walls. The gates to their left stood closed and locked, mute sentinels. He swallowed. Now was not the time to be getting scared, he knew that, but the silence and the emptiness was just horrible.

He looked over at Gaara, who returned the gaze with implacable calmness. Just like Gaara, calm and always the same, dependable and trustworthy. He tried to smile.

"Ready?" And with a burst of chakra, they leaped up and onto the wall, crouching as soon as they hit the stone.

The village stretched out in front of them, still and silent, the gray tumbledown buildings leaning on each other and frayed power lines dangling from poles. The buildings all looked the same, as if built from the same mold to house a thousand people who would never come. The roads were empty, the buildings devoid of light, with nothing in the village to show that anyone lived there.

The black tower loomed overhead threateningly, surrounded by coils of mist that reflected the pale blue light across the village, washing out all the tattered banners and bleaching the last remnants of color in the village to a pasty gray.

As they got closer, it was possible to hear a low, malevolent humming, one that made Naruto's teeth ache in their gums, and it became an effort to lift his feet and set them down again.

"Hey, Gaara, why's this village so-" he flapped a hand at the falling buildings and the decrepit paving stones beneath their feet with dead plants sprouting through the cracks. Gaara tried to answer, but was forced to yell over the piercing hum,

"According to my history books, when the Nekomata attacked Kumogakure thirteen years ago, Kumogakure realized how weak they were. Since then, all the income from their shinobi has gone solely to strengthening their defenses and coming up with new techniques. Thus, the ruinous state of the village infrastructure."

Then his voice was lost in the hum. Naruto found the stairs that spiraled around the outside of the tower and gestured to Gaara. The two began to climb, their hands pressed to their ears, Naruto's teeth rattling in his head. '_If there's some evil ritual going on up there, I am going to be so pissed off! I don't want to deal with insane people and more fighting_.'

The wind grew stronger the farther they climbed, snapping their clothes back and forth, tugging at them and trying to hurl them from the tower. Gaara put his mouth by Naruto's ear, straining to be heard over the noise and the chattering of his teeth,

"There's a door up ahead!" Naruto nodded and trudged onward, towards the blue light that he could see pouring out from around the edges of the wooden door set into the rock. He curled stiff fingers around the handle and tugged it open.

They fell inside the tower, the door slamming shut behind them, the wind cutting off as if it had been cut with a knife. The circular hallway was painted white, full of the eerie blue glow that made their shadows flicker on the walls. There was another door further down, this one chained shut and locked.

"Damn it!" Naruto muttered, yanking at the handle. It did seem weird that there weren't any guards around, but they had more important things to worry about. He finally gave up and slumped against the door, glaring at the wood. "Got any ideas, Gaara?" Silence. "Gaara?" He looked up.

Gaara was further down the hallway, crouched beneath a window with just the top of his head over the sill, staring inside the room. His skin was even paler in the blue light, the tattoo on his forehead darkening so that the red looked black. Naruto crawled down the hallway to him, took a deep breath, and stuck his head over the sill, inhaling a breath that smelled of ozone and lightning.

The breath froze in his lungs, his eyes widening.

The room was circular, and a high ceiling glittered far above. The inhabitants of the village stood around the outer edges of the room, their faces twisted with hate and disgust. All of the people looked worn-down, their ragged clothes hanging off skinny frames. Even the children were still and sickly, gazing at the center of the room with large dark eyes.

There was a woman in the center of the room, sitting on a chair with her limbs chained to the wood. The chair was bolted to the floor, and the chains were attached to the bolts. She looked a little taller than him, around five feet. But it was almost hard to tell that she was a girl; there were no curves, nothing but the long, waist-length ponytail of silver-blonde hair, the skinny hands, the fine-boned face, to tell her gender, and somehow that was horribly sad. Her eyes were a pale blue, fixed on the ceiling high above, and slanted, resembling the eyes of a cat.

Her hands spasmed, nails digging into the wood and carving deep gouges, as the man- the Raikage, dressed in his dark blue robes and headdress- laid his hands on the black seals swirling around her neck in a faded collar of ink.

"What… are they doing?" he whispered in a small voice, eyes fixed on the scene. The woman- jinchuuriki- jerked, back arching in a curving bow, straining against the bonds. She coughed, blood spraying from her mouth in a fine mist, fingers scrabbling at the wood.

"I don't know," Gaara admitted.

'_Kyuubi_?' He felt the fox shift, felt its pleasure in the other demon's pain.

::_The seal the Fourth performed was the first perfect seal. All other jinchuuriki before you were imperfect, their seals damaged and badly made. It is necessary to reinforce those seals every two months to prevent the demon's escape and subsequent destruction. But to reinforce a seal without sacrificing oneself is a tricky proposition, and requires taking chakra from every member of a village_.:: He felt Kyuubi smile. ::_It causes great agony to the host_.::

"Something is happening," Gaara said, his eyes narrowing. Naruto looked back inside the room and blinked. The Raikage had a needle and a bowl of ink, and it looked like he was- Yeah. He was. He wet the needle with ink, shook it to get the extra off, and plunged it toward the woman.

Black fire exploded from the seal, twirling and snapping hungrily at the empty air. The needle melted, the Raikage dropped it, cursing, his words inaudible through the humming, and snapped out an order to the shinobi standing by. The woman continued to cough, her eyes wide with pain, shaking in the chair as if she was being electrocuted. One of the ANBU- or something like ANBU, since they were wearing white masks- stepped forward, pulled on a thick glove, and jabbed her in the throat.

The woman's head crashed against the back of the chair with a dull 'thunk', the ANBU pressing his arm into her throat to hold her there. The woman's tired eyes rolled forward to stare at him, glowing in the dim light like a tiger's. Blood trickled from the corners of her mouth, and she swallowed visibly.

The black fire cut off, flying back to her to be absorbed into the seal. The Raikage smiled, picked up another needle, and raised his other hand. Chakra gathered in his palm, coming in tendrils from all the people gathered there, forming a large, faintly shimmering orb. A few of the children fell, gathered up by their parents, and even the shinobi started to tremble with exhaustion.

The chakra disappeared, absorbed into the needle, and the Raikage dipped the needle in the ink again. He nodded to the ANBU who stood above the woman, pressing her back into the chair, and struck. The needle plunged in, the chakra shot into the seal, and the humming stopped, leaving the room silent as the grave.

The Raikage leaned over the woman, pried her eye open, and stared into it, treating her as if she were little more than a scientific curiosity. He threw the needle into a trashcan.

"You can get off of her, Inoue-san." The ANBU stepped back, removed the smoking glove, and bent to undo the chains. The people started to head for the doors.

'_Shit! We have to hide._' Naruto performed a quick genjutsu, making Gaara look like one of the ANBU and himself like another shinobi. They stood on either side of the door, looking as grave and guard-like as possible as the people filed out and down the hallway, all completely silent, some staggering and being held up by the others. The hallway emptied quickly, as if none of the people wanted to be near the jinchuuriki any longer than they had to be.

The ANBU left, leaving just the jinchuuriki, the Raikage, and an older woman in the room, the woman holding a small child's hand. Naruto jerked a thumb at the window, and they moved down the empty hallway to peer inside.

The jinchuuriki levered herself to her feet painfully slowly, wiping her mouth. Blood smeared the back of her hand. She looked at the Raikage and the woman with empty eyes, expecting nothing, her thin limbs swimming in the black clothing of an ANBU, her head held high.

"I'll expect to see your mission report on my desk in the morning," the Raikage said, turning away and leaving the room, his robes dragging on the floor, booted feet loud on the tile. The woman tilted her head, studying the jinchuuriki with eyes that bled a sort of subdued loathing. Even the small child by her side was glaring. She threw the white scarf in her hand at the jinchuuriki, who caught it without looking.

"Cover that… _thing_ up, Nii-san. It's disgusting." Nii- the jinchuuriki- tied the scarf around her throat without saying a word, covering the black glyphs of the seal from view. The woman folded her arms, looked Nii up and down, and nodded.

"Good."

She took the child by the hand and walked away, not even faltering at Nii's soft,

"Goodbye, mother."

The door to the outside slammed. The room was empty and silent. Nii stood in the center for a long moment, completely still, before she moved, limping like an old woman towards the door. Gaara pulled Naruto out of the way, and they watched her make her way out of the tower and down to the village below.

Naruto followed her, pulling Gaara with him as Nii continued to walk, the crowds parting before her like cloth under the knife. There was life in the Village Hidden in the Clouds now; children chased each other down the alleyways, ignoring the rats in the corners; women hung their washing, the clothes all alike in their drab grayness; men conversed softly as they walked.

It was like life, and somehow… not.

"I can't believe she has parents," Naruto said as Nii turned a corner up ahead, "It's horrible that her own mother could be that mean." Gaara shrugged.

"She is jinchuuriki."

"Well, yeah, but your own _mother_?" Gaara glanced at him out the corner of his eye, his pale green eyes poisonous. '_Okay, getting off that topic… now_.'

"She lives in a pretty crappy part of town, I have to admit," Naruto said, looking around. It was getting darker and darker; only her pale blonde hair, flickering in the gloom, had any color or light. The buildings around them were destroyed, crumbling ruins with mold on the walls and graffiti on the bricks.

Nii found her apartment building, unlocked it, and climbed the stairs to the third floor and apartment 302 . They followed, or tried to at any rate, because suddenly there was a kunai blade at both their throats, and a soft voice said,

"You two walk like a herd of elephants. Care to tell me what you're doing here before I kill you?"

Naruto swallowed and turned his head enough to stare into a light blue eye, narrowed in irritation. "Uh- hi! I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and he's Gaara, and we are-" he saw Gaara's nod, and secretly envied how calm the other boy looked for being held hostage by a crazy woman's clone,

"We're jinchuuriki, too! Can we talk to you?" The kunai pressed closer. He could feel his skin split and blood run down the blade.

"Where are your seals?"

"Stomach," Naruto squeaked. "Shoulder," Gaara said, sounding bored. He felt a hand jerk his shirt up and trace the seal.

"They are authentic," Nii said, sounding faintly surprised. The kunai left, and a rough hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. Nii stared down at him, her clone disappearing. Gaara came to stand beside him, his lip curled in a grumpy frown.

"Why are you here?" Nii said. Naruto laughed nervously and scratched his neck, "Well, that's kind of a long story, so can we tell you in your apartment? And what's your name, anyway?"

Nii was a pretty woman, even with her face pinched with pain and exhaustion. She looked them both over, kunai spinning idly on her finger, and finally said,

"Yugito Nii."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone who's reviewed! I realize this chapter doesn't have much action, but the next one definitely will. I hope you like it; please review with any comments or critiques you may have!_  
_

* * *

_I am locked in my head  
With what I've done  
I know you tried to rescue me  
Didn't let anyone get in  
Left with a trace of all that was  
And all that could have been_  
- 'And All That Could Have Been' by Nine Inch Nails

* * *

Yugito's apartment was cramped, windowless, and bare, so cold that Naruto's breath steamed in the air, and so empty that it seemed as if no one had lived there for years. There was a futon in the corner, a kitchen area in another, and a bathroom in the back, but nothing on the walls but a few weapons, no books, no plants, no posters. The room was only lit by a flickering lightbulb on a cord, throwing their shadows across the room. 

"Would you like some… tea?" Yugito said reluctantly, shoulders hunched and arms folded across her chest. Naruto blinked and tore his eyes away from the ANBU katana hanging on the wall, grinning.

"That'd be awesome! Hey, Gaara, you want some?" Gaara was already seated at the tiny kitchen table on the one chair. He nodded. Yugito opened a cupboard- Naruto strained to look inside, and saw nothing but a sagging loaf of bread and a little bit of butter- and removed a pot.

She turned the stove on, crumbled the tea leaves into the water, and left it there, limping back to lean against the counter.

"Village affiliations?"

Naruto sat on the floor, leaning against the wall and watching the way Yugito moved with interest. Even in obvious pain, slowed down and tired, she still moved with a weird sort of innate, feline grace.

"Suna," Gaara said, before jerking his head at Naruto. "Konoha." Yugito blinked her slanted eyes, her stance widening and hand going to her weapons pouch. '_Wonder what got her so riled up? Konoha's never attacked Kumo,_' Naruto thought, frowning, '_Well, at least not that I can remember_.'

"You're foolish to come into Kumo, Uzumaki," she said, "after what happened with your Hyuuga clan." Naruto looked up. "Huh? But you guys were the ones who tried to kidnap Hinata!" Yugito shrugged, turning to take the kettle off the stove and pouring tea.

"I could care less what happens to the insects of this village," she said as she gave Gaara the one cracked cup and Naruto a bowl. "They could all die tomorrow, and I would laugh." Naruto sipped the strong dark liquid from his makeshift cup, watching Yugito cross to her futon. She sat down with a quiet groan, stretching her legs out.

"But the rest of Kumo still cares." She smiled for the first time, an expression twisted with pain and loathing, "In fact, they still have Hyuuga's tarred head mounted on the railings of the tower." She shook her head, undoing the hair ties and letting her silver-blonde hair fall free over her skinny shoulders.

'_Damn, this woman's scary!_'

Yugito sighed and undid the scarf, exposing the black waves twisting around her neck. "I apologize for my lack of manners, Uzumaki," she said, nodding at the bowl in his hands. "I haven't had visitors to my home since I was seven."

"It is fine," Gaara said, finishing his tea and setting the mug aside. Yugito threw the blood-speckled scarf aside and crossed her legs, tilting her head. "I know you two didn't show up at my home for a cup of tea and my _scintillating-_", her voice was bitter and harsh with pain, "-conversation. What do you want?"

Naruto bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Well, this sounds really stupid, but there's this group of missing-nin called Akatsuki, okay?" She was silent. "And anyway, they're going around collecting jinchuuriki and taking the demons out of them- and this kills them, by the way- to take over the world or something, and Kyuubi- he's the one in me-"

He shut up as she held up a hand. "Kyuubi, the Nine-Tails?" At his mute nod, her lips twisted into a sneer. "No wonder the cat was going berserk earlier. What's he?" She glanced at Gaara.

"Shukaku," Gaara said, apparently feeling that one word was enough to fulfill his word allotment for the day. Yugito made a small noise of interest and waved a hand for Naruto to continue.

"Well, Kyuubi told me that I had to leave Konoha-" he was somehow proud of himself for being able to say the name without his voice breaking, even though his throat hurt whenever he thought about the village he would never see again, "-and collect all the jinchuuriki so we could go to a village in the jungle and hide from Akatsuki there or something." He laughed, high-pitched with nervousness under her piercing gaze, "I guess when you say it like that, it really does sound stupid."

"No, it sounds like the ramblings of a deranged madman," Yugito said. Naruto blinked.

"Well, I'm not deranged. What's your demon?"

Yugito glanced down, rubbing at her fingernails, which had been bitten down so far that they seeped blood. She finally answered in a weary voice,

"The Nekomata, the two-tailed cat."

"What's it do?" She coughed, rubbing at her mouth. Her hand came away smeared with black-tinged blood. "Breathes fire, mostly." Her tone said that the avenue of conversation was closed, locked, and the key thrown into a lake somewhere. "Have you two come all the way from Konoha and Suna in your normal appearances?"

"Well, we didn't exactly have time to go home and change clothes, you know," he snapped, "and I spent the last of my money buying these crappy outfits." Yugito sighed. "Fine. I'll get you two some clothes tomorrow from the ANBU quartermaster." Naruto leaned forward.

"That mean you're coming with us?"

"No."

"Huh? Why not? This village _sucks_, and it's not like the villagers like you all that much- sorry for saying that, but it is true- and at least with us you're not going to be treated like dirt."

Her pale eyes narrowed, and she bit out each word with crushing finality.

"My mother and my younger brother still live here. And even though they don't want me and would rather see me dead and rotting in the ground, I will not abandon them to their fates. All my money goes to them, to keep them alive. Or did you think my family escaped unscathed from giving birth to the girl who would become a demon?"

Naruto glanced over his shoulder at Gaara, who met his gaze helplessly, shoulders twitching in a shrug. '_There is nothing we can do_,' his eyes seemed to say.

Yugito's voice flattened, became tired. "I would only slow you down," she said. "After a seal reinforcing, I'm useless for a week."

"But we can deal with that," he said, leaning forward, hands palm-up, trying to make her see-

But she only shook her head and said tonelessly, "I will get you both better clothing, masks, and as many weapons and rations as I can requisition, but that is all I will do."

Naruto fell back against the wall, teeth grinding in frustration. Yugito lay down, wincing with every movement, and pulled the sheets over her.

"There's an empty apartment two floors up," she said, her voice raspy and slurred with exhaustion, "You can sleep there." And then she reached for the string attached to the light switch, and turned the flickering bulb off.

* * *

Gaara watched Naruto pace back and forth across the empty apartment, bare feet making almost no sound against the worn carpet. The apartment was in even worse condition than Nii's; there was black mold in the corners, water damage on the ceiling, and the tiles above the kitchen were cracked and falling out. 

The other genin had been ranting about Nii's refusal to come with them without cease for the past hour, hands waving in the air and voice getting hoarser with each word. He had listened at first, but as Naruto's complaints had degenerated into repetitious whining, he stopped, looking out the window instead at the darkening night.

Naruto finally ran out of energy and sat down, scowling at the floor. "Hey, Gaara, you have any ideas?" Gaara looked away from the window and back at Naruto.

"We could contact the family. It appears that her misplaced love for them is all that holds her here; if they find some way to secure an alternate source of income, there will be nothing binding her here, and she can come with us."

"Okay, but-" he held up a hand, forestalling Naruto's imminent objections,

"Alternatively, we could infiltrate the Raikage's office, defeat him and his guards in combat, and extract a promise from the Raikage, in writing, to provide and care for Nii's family until the family line is destroyed."

"Gaara, you're talking about going up against a _Kage_! Do you have any idea how hard we'd get our asses kicked?!"

Gaara stared into Naruto's eyes, holding his attention as he said,

"You are a jinchuuriki, Naruto. Not only that, you are jinchuuriki to the most powerful creature that has ever walked the continent. The Nine-Tail's chakra is limitless. As long as you are in no physical danger of unconsciousness, you can utilize that chakra, and with enough of it, you can defeat him. I think-" he took a breath, "that it is time you stop avoiding the gift that has been given to you, and start using it instead."

Naruto's mouth opened and closed several times. He seemed too stunned to speak, finally settling for, "But how am I supposed to keep him from hitting me and blowing me up?"

Gaara flexed his hand, feeling the millions of grains of sand on his skin grate against each other.

"I will take out the guards, destroy the locks, and cover the windows to prevent reinforcements arriving before we can take out the Kage." 

Naruto moved closer, his eyes shining at the prospect of combat. "And what'll I be doing?"

"Fighting the Kage. Once I am done, we will join forces against the Kage. Of course, that method is loud, obnoxious, and will no doubt broadcast our presence here to everyone on the continent, so I would prefer to talk to Nii's family first." 

Naruto looked out the window, grinned, and bounced to his feet. "It's still light outside- well, kind of- so we can go now!" He grabbed Gaara by the wrist and hauled him upright, opening the door with his other hand. Gaara tried to dig his heels in- he didn't want to be dragged anywhere- but failed, forced to give in to Naruto's overwhelming excitement.

"I shouldn't have gone with you," he muttered as Naruto pulled him out of the room and down the stairs.

* * *

Nii's family lived in a ramshackle house on the edge of Kumogakure, near the white walls and the stream that encircled the village, with a carefully tended front garden and a roof with holes. Getting inside the high, menacing fence had been exceedingly difficult in the first place; Gaara had been forced to just foul the lock up completely with his sand just to get them in. Naruto finally let go of Gaara's hand and went to the door, knocking. There was the sound of several locks and a few chains being undone before the door cracked open a little and a tired eye squinted from the musty gloom within the house. 

"What do you want?" The voice was familiar; it was Nii's mother.

"Can we talk to you about your daughter?" Naruto said, sounding- for once- like a well-mannered civilian. The pale blue eye- so much like Nii's- narrowed, and the door opened a bit further, exposing her face, lined from years of stress.

"Why?"

"We want to take her from the village," Naruto said. Gaara wanted to smash Naruto over the head with a rock at his ridiculous honesty. As it was, he settled for jabbing him in the back. Naruto followed that up with, "We're jinchuuriki, and we want to give her some sort of a better life. Can we come in?" The lone eye blinked, and Nii's mother reached up and undid the last three chains, opening the door wide.

Naruto stepped over the threshold, and Gaara followed, looking around as much as he could without being noticed. The house was as cold as Nii's apartment had been, but more lived-in in appearance; there were faded textiles covering the splintered chairs and a few wall scrolls hanging on the peeling wallpaper. A few children's toys were scattered about the floor, scarcely-used; most had a coating of dust a few inches thick on them, as if no one had touched them or moved them for years.

The air was full of dust, and an old, black-and-white television set played softly from a corner. All of the old pictures, hanging in warped frames, had been cut and pasted together to remove Nii, leaving gaps in the photographs.

"Have a seat," the woman said, gesturing at the chairs in the living room, before she went into the kitchen. There was the sound of dishes clattering, a refrigerator opening, and a child's voice. Then the woman came back, a plate of pickled vegetables in one hand and her son on her hip.

The child was sickly and pale in appearance, his dark eyes too large for his face, and he stared at them listlessly, without any interest as to the strange people who had invaded his home. Gaara wondered what was wrong with him, what sort of unspecified illness had produced the translucent quality of his skin and the bruising around his eyes, but did not ask, watching the woman hitch the child further up her hip.

She put the plate between them and sat on one of the creaking chairs, watching Naruto eat.

"What are your names?"

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and he's Gaara," Naruto said brightly, finishing off the plate in record time. "What's the little guy's name?"

"Daichi," she said. "I am Hiroko."

"Great to meet you," Naruto said. Daichi made a soft sound and Hiroko comforted him, brushing his sparse hair with her fingers. The radiator in the corner hummed softly, doing nothing to heat the small room. Hiroko pulled Daichi closer to her and leaned forward. She had once been beautiful, if Gaara was any judge of such things, but pain and stress had ruined her appearance, bleaching her hair gray and leaving her face gaunt and sagging with resignation.

"What did you mean by taking my daughter away?"

"Well," Naruto scratched his head, "what it sounds like, I guess. We'd take her away from the village to a place in the south that's safer." Hiroko leaned back, shoulders slumping as she let out a sigh.

There was a long pause. The radiator droned on into infinity, and the dust specks danced in the darkening room.

"I'm sorry, Uzumaki-san, but I can't let you do that." She looked down at her son with weary affection. "She supports us, you see; she pays for Daichi to go to a nursery while I work cleaning houses. If she left-" she glanced around at the squalid surroundings, "we would have even less than we do now."

"Umm…" Naruto said, looking around at the edited pictures, "why did you cut her out of all your photos?" Hiroko's face froze into a mask of pain. Daichi whimpered.

"I couldn't bear to look at her," Hiroko said in a tiny voice, each word cracking like ice in spring, "I couldn't look at what my daughter- my first child, my little girl- had become. She _killed_ my husband, don't you see?"

"The Nekomata is the Nekomata," Naruto said earnestly, leaning forward as if to force his philosophy into her, "but Yugito's still herself."

"_No!_" Hiroko snarled, "No, she's not. I looked at her- after Kensuke tore her from my arms and held her down inside that tower and forced that demon inside of her- and she had the blood of my husband, Kensuke, all over her little hands. The demon took her over, and killed the ones who sealed it." Her voice shuddered. "They gave her back to me, just pushed her into my arms, with her neck still seeping ink, and said 'This is your daughter. She is jinchuuriki. Thank you, ma'am, for making this sacrifice for Kumogakure.' And her eyes- her blue eyes, so beautiful- they were black. They were black, and when I looked deep enough, I could see the demon, see how _much_ it hated us, and I knew-"

Her voice broke,

"I could never love her the same way again." She was dry-eyed, as if all the tears for the loss of her daughter had been shed long ago, as she said, "I lost my daughter, and I lost my husband. I had to stand there as the Raikage gave me this little-" her smile was watery, sketching a box the size of a toddler's hand with her finger, "-pine box and told me that all that was left of Kensuke was in there, that they had to scour the room just to- just to find enough of him to bury."

Daichi keened softly. "And Yugito- my little Yugito-chan- didn't even remember that she killed her father. Didn't know what she was. And sometimes at night, she would crawl into my bed, and curl up beside me like she used to, and I could still see the demon in her eyes." Hiroko's head fell forward, as she said, with the air of someone who had tried to explain this to herself a thousand times before,

"I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't sit at the kitchen table with her and watch this mockery of my daughter laugh, couldn't look at her hurt eyes, couldn't listen to her crying because the other children wouldn't play with her, couldn't listen to her whispering in my ear at night, 'Why don't you love me anymore, mama?' because she wasn't my daughter. She would never be my daughter again.

They took her at my request, two months after she became jinchuuriki, and moved her into an apartment on the far side of town." Hiroko stroked Daichi's back. "And I couldn't escape her, even then, even now." Hiroko's voice was soft now, drained of all emotion. "I tried to cut her out of my life. I destroyed her belongings. I removed her from all the photographs. I burned her drawings. And she still wouldn't go away; I kept finding more photos of her, more of her toys stashed in every nook and cranny, as if she was punishing me for my failure to love her."

Hiroko raised her head and stared at them with burning eyes. "I'm not an evil woman, Uzumaki-san. I'm not bad, or cruel, or mean. I just- I just can't forget. And I've tried- _god, _I've tried- to forgive her, to love her again, but I _can't_. And even though I abandoned my daughter, the only good thing I had on this earth, don't I-" her voice became shrill, "don't I deserve forgiveness?"

She let Daichi fall, and crumpled in on herself like a used piece of paper, her face hidden in her thin hands, her shoulders shaking inside her blouse. Daichi was silent, his sad little face blank, his dark eyes empty.

He stood, pulling Naruto with him. There was nothing more they could do here.

And they left Hiroko Nii there, weeping in the little ramshackle house on the edge of the village, haunted by a husband that killed a daughter, a daughter that killed a husband, and a demon that had slain her world.

A victim of the tragedy that was the jinchuuriki, an endless circle of pain that stretched out to enfold the world.

* * *

Annotations 

_'...an endless circle of pain that stretched out to enfold the world.' _- An allusion to the poem The Diameter of the Bomb by Yehuda Amichai.


	5. Chapter 5

_Baby this town rips the bones from your back  
It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap  
We gotta get out while we're young  
Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run_  
- 'Born to Run' by Bruce Springsteen

* * *

Naruto woke up as the first rays of light filled the empty apartment, looking for Gaara immediately. The other jinchuuriki was by the window, his face peaceful as he stared outside at the ruined buildings surrounding the apartments.

"Hey, Gaara," he said, pushing himself off the floor and dusting off his ratty clothes. "Ready to go kick the Raikage's butt?" Gaara turned to face him, placid and still as the surface of a lake. Why shouldn't he be calm, Naruto realized. Where other people had to waste half of their lives sleeping, Gaara had nothing but time to look forward to.

"I heard Nii turning all night," Gaara said as he stood, brushing his hair back with his fingers. His lips quirked up in something resembling a smile. "How long the night seems to one kept awake by pain."

"Uh… okay. Ready?" Gaara nodded and they both exited by the window, just to be different. Kumo was easier to navigate than Konoha, since its endless apartment buildings were all the same height, the frayed power lines all following the grid pattern of the streets. The Raikage's tower stuck up from the center of town, its monolithic height and inscrutable carvings giving the impression that the tower heartily disapproved of what Gaara and Naruto were planning.

It was early, and the sun was just over the edge of the mountains, spilling silver light over the menacing tower and the snow on the peaks. The village was silent, with not even the chirping of birds to break the stillness. They paused on the roof nearest the tower, and Naruto glanced at Gaara.

"Time for the Sand Eye?" Gaara nodded in response, and covered his left eye with his hand as another eye coalesced in the air beside him, a shining orb with a pale green iris that floated in the air for a moment before zooming away, leaving a trail of sand grains behind it. '_Creepy._'

He plopped down on the roof and lay back, staring at the cloudy sky and feeling snowflakes landing on his skin. Gaara sat up straight, his hand over his eye, and he muttered distractedly,

"Four jounin at the outer door. Two ANBU at the inner- I believe, it is difficult to see the entirety of the room without being seen- door that leads to the Raikage's office. ANBU are armed with katana; there's a window in the outer room we can use. Locks are pin tumblers, easily jammed."

He took his hand away and clenched it, opening his left eye. "Are you ready?"

"Yep! Let's go." And they were climbing up the side of the tower, hidden by the ramp that spiraled around the outside, chakra layered on their hands and feet. The black stone was unnaturally cold, sucking all the warmth from him. He began to shiver as they climbed further, towards the window gleaming above.

"Okay, how much do you need the window open to get enough sand in to take down the jounin?" Gaara's eyes spaced out as if he was calculating some math problem. Both of them clung to the sill, suppressing their chakra to the minimum level to keep from being found.

"An inch should do it."

Naruto spat on the grooves and rubbed it in with his thumb before fitting his fingernails underneath the bottom plate and wiggling it up.

The window squeaked and they froze. A long minute passed, filled with only their breathing and the twinges of the chakra on their feet. He swallowed and worked it up further, turning to Gaara in question. The other jinchuuriki nodded, and sand began flowing in a silent brown river through the opening and down into the room.

Naruto peered over the edge, watching the sand grains slowly roll across the carpet. The four jounin standing around had completely bored looks on their faces. One looked like he was seriously contemplating picking his nose.

The sand split into four tendrils, all moving around the outside edge of the room, as silent as a snake, to puddle behind the jounin. '_It's not that much sand, though- can he really do much with that tiny bit?_' He glanced back down at Gaara, who had an expression of concentration on his pale face.

Gaara's hand clenched into a fist.

The sand suddenly leaped, coiled around their legs and pulled them to the ground, slithering up their bodies as they clawed futilely at it. One attempted to scream but was smothered, sand pouring into his mouth and nose. Choking on sand, they rocked back and forth for a moment, spasming, until unconsciousness finally crept up on them and they fell limp.

Naruto swung up and over the windowsill, landing on the carpeted floor with a soft noise. Gaara followed, watching as Naruto stole over to the jounin and checked their pulses.

"They're alive," he said, relieved, as blood-tinged sand slithered out of the jounin and joined back with Gaara. Gaara shrugged. "You would be angry if I killed them." Naruto smiled at him, ridiculously pleased that Gaara would hold back his bloodlust for him. He looked around, checking the hallway, and opened the door.

The ANBU started, one drawing her katana, the other flinging a kunai. Sand flickered in front of Naruto's face, stopping the kunai and letting it drop down into Naruto's hand. The bright steel of the katana flashed, the blade slipping by underneath his chin as he leaned back.

The door shut, the lock jammed with sand. Gaara was occupied with the other ANBU, leaving Naruto armed with only a kunai. His hands flickered through seals, and the room was suddenly full of clones, all diving for the ANBU. The blade scythed through several of them, making them disappear in puffs of smoke. Naruto dove for the door to the Kage's office, yanked it open, and rushed inside, closing the door behind him and jamming the kunai into the lock. The Raikage was already waiting, electricity humming in his hand, white-blue and musty-smelling, dangerous.

"Who are you?" The Raikage was younger than he expected, almost Kakashi's age. Naruto widened his stance, ready to attack. There was a muffled scream from the other room, and Gaara's low, snarling laughter drifted in underneath the door.

"We're here to take Yugito Nii."

The Raikage raised a brow, snorting. "You attack my jounin and invade my village just to get that? She's worth nothing."

"She's worth everything to us. And she won't come with us because her family doesn't have enough money to support themselves." There was silence in the other room, but for the rustling of sand. Naruto tensed, ready for the Raikage's attack. "We want you to guarantee to support Yugito's family until the family line dies out."

"And why should I do that?" The Raikage stalked out from behind his desk, tossing his sphere of electricity from hand to hand. More clones 'poofed!' into existence, milling about behind Naruto, their eyes all fixed on the Raikage.

"Because then you won't die." Naruto glanced around. The room was small, filled with bookcases and a few chairs, windowless. It was not a good place to fight a Kage in. The Raikage snorted, moving closer, his dark eyes intent.

"You, kill me? I doubt that. I think it's more likely that I'll kill you!" And then he was moving, electricity howling in his hand as it drove toward Naruto's chest. Naruto went boneless, sliding to the floor as the electricity passed over his head and scorched the wood black.

He winced as a long score opened up along his cheek, seeping blood that boiled off immediately, and hooked an elbow around the Raikage's ankle, yanking him down. The other man caught himself with a hand and swept a leg out in a kick, heel driving into Naruto's belly and sending him flying across the office.

His head slammed into the wall, white light flashing across the inside of his eyelids- he opened his eyes just in time to see a kunai rocket at him, aimed for his throat. A clone got in the way, exploded, and Naruto moved again, his clones joining in as they dove for the Raikage, who dispatched them all with quick jabs to the throat, making it look effortless.

'_I knew I shouldn't have gotten involved in this,_' was all he had time to think before the Raikage appeared in front of him and drove a knee into his stomach and an elbow into his throat. He tried to scream, but only wheezed, his knees suddenly turned to water as he staggered.

Electricity flashed across his shoulder, cold as ice at first before morphing into white pain. A clone leaped onto the Raikage's back, wrapping its arms around his neck and jerking at him while Naruto fell onto the Raikage and dragged him to the ground, planting a fist on his chin. He felt something crack, and grinned inside, punching him again.

More clones piled on in a welter of fists and feet, all popping out of existence in seconds, until it was just him.

Him stuck in a tiny room with a beat-up, very angry Kage. '_Crap._' Another technique; thin strands of white-blue filaments, like electric wire, weaved in and out of each other in the air, attached to the Raikage's fingers.

"I was going to let you live," the man said thoughtfully, "but not anymore." And the wires stiffened and shot for him. He tried to dodge, but one caught him in the shoulder, plunging through cloth and skin and muscle, the other hitting his chest. He thought he could feel it scraping against his ribs.

::_Use my chakra,_:: the Kyuubi suddenly demanded, his voice rough with longing for battle. ::_You cannot beat him on your own, and I have no desire to die before the quest is over, so use my chakra, you ridiculous brat!_::

He looked down at his blood-stained clothes, then back up. The room was wavering; he felt very hot all of a sudden. '_Shock from blood loss, I guess,_' he thought, before stiffening and groaning as electricity skittered up his spine and locked his limbs in place, muscles spasming.

'_Okay._' He licked his lips as he saw another surge build up on the wires. '_Okay._' He moved stiff fingers into the seal, and let himself go. Red chakra flamed on his skin, nails and teeth lengthening, a fiery tail growing out and lashing to and fro as the wires were pushed out of his skin, melting into little puddles on the floor.

He hoped one tail would be enough. Naruto drew his feet up underneath him, onto the burning, blackening wood, and launched himself, mouth open in a pained snarl. The world seemed slow, all of a sudden, as if he could see everything the Kage was going to do. The wires coiled, too slow, because he was-

There. The Kage crashed to the floor, his eyes wide, his skin blistering as the Kyuubi's chakra flowed over him, trying to protect his face with his arms. Naruto grinned, clawed fingers digging into the soft flesh of his throat as he leaned in, resting his teeth on the thin skin over the jugular, feeling the blood thrum against his teeth, hearing Kyuubi's voice whisper about killing him, about strength and power and how proud he would be to destroy a Kage.

The door opened and Gaara strolled in, covered in blood, his hair clumped and black with gore, blood droplets splishing to the floor and puddling in crimson lakes. He felt the Kage swallow underneath his fingers, smelled the acrid, iron stench of fear.

"The ANBU are neutralized," Gaara said in a bored tone, licking at the blood on the back of his hand as if he were a cat. He glanced at the Kage and smiled, slowly. "No one is coming to help you." The Raikage shook, and finally forced out in a high-pitched squeak,

"I'll- I'll do it." Naruto grinned and sat back on his heels, watching the man struggle to his feet, rubbing at the bloody marks on his throat with burned hands. The Kyuubi's chakra faded, forced back into the seal, and he stood, wincing as his joints cracked from the sudden change in his body's chakra pathways. The Raikage went behind the desk, got a piece of paper, and dipped his pen in the inkwell, looking up at him.

"What do you want?"

"You handle this, Gaara. I don't know anything about contracts and legal stuff." Gaara nodded his blood-dyed head and went to stand before the desk, dictating the contract, while Naruto went out into the outer room.

The room was clean, almost sterile, and smelled like a hospital. '_I guess the sand got all the blood, then._' There were no bodies; the sand had crushed them and absorbed them, removing all physical trace of them from the world forever. '_Good thing he likes me._' He leaned against the doorframe, cleaning the Raikage's blood out from under his fingernails, while Gaara finished with the contract.

He heard banging on the outer door, but ignored it; the Raikage would handle it after they left, and the sand wouldn't let anyone through in the first place. Gaara came out of the Raikage's office, two contracts in his hand.

"Done. One is for Nii's mother, and the other is for Nii herself. The Raikage will give us until noon today to leave the village. He cannot guarantee our safety afterwards." The sand blocking the outer window slithered away, joining with Gaara's armor again.

"Ready?" Gaara nodded, and they left the Raikage's tower behind.

* * *

Yugito lay on her back with her eyes closed, her hand resting on the kunai at her side. All she could taste was blood; her mouth was full of it, the air thick with the stench of it as her esophageal lining peeled and tore from the Nekomata's chakra pushing at the seal.

She turned her head to the side, enough to spit into the cup by her futon. Even that was an effort, and she had to rest, breathing shallowly in an attempt to keep from swallowing. She felt tired, empty, beaten.

There had been a time- long before, when her mother still cared- where she would sit by her bedside and put hot cloths on her forehead, would make tea and help her to drink it, would play word games and laugh at her clumsy attempts to draw.

But that had been a lie.

The doorknob rattled, a brazen voice ringing out,

"Hey, Yugito! We got your mom a contract!" Her eyes opened slowly, staring across the worn carpet spattered with small blood stains, the low table empty of dishes or signs of habitation. She didn't try to talk.

Because it didn't matter what they had done; she had already requisitioned their supplies during the night, before the exhaustion and the illness truly caught up with her, and she would give them their things and watch them leave before returning to an cycle of endless days alone and nights where the fingers of the dead were all the human contact she knew.

The window banged, and a yellow blur leaped over her prone form and landed on the floor. Gaara followed more sedately, his hair full of blood and his eyes as deadened and pale as the moon. Uzumaki crouched in front of her, blue eyes narrowed.

"Yugito? You okay?" She stared at him, lifting a brow. He laughed sheepishly, scratching at the back of his head. "Stupid question, right. But we got something cool!" He shoved a piece of paper in her direction. She unclenched her fingers from the kunai and reached for it, recognizing the Raikage's signature and seal.

She scanned it quickly, the bottom of her stomach dropping further with every word she read. '_How did they get him to agree? Have they told Mother?_' It was such a strange feeling, realizing that she was free of the obligation that chained her here, the duty to a family that despised her, the duty to a mother who had forgotten her.

She struggled to sit up, and leaned back against the pillows, clearing her throat before rasping, "Have you told my mother?" Uzumaki winced at the sound of her voice.  
"God, Yugito, you sound terrible! Do you want something to drink? I can make tea!" And before she could even respond, he was across the room and rooting through her cabinets with horrible rattling sounds. Gaara sat down in front of her, saying, "The Raikage has promised to provide for your family line until the line dies out, with a sum of two thousand dollars per month." She reached out and took the cup of tea Uzumaki offered her, sipping it. It burned her throat and made tears spring to the corners of her eyes.

"What prevents him from reneging on his promise?"

Uzumaki plopped down and sprawled across the carpet, propping his chin on his fists. "He won't." His eyes flickered crimson.

The Nekomata stopped her ceaseless attacks on the seal, cowed by the presence of the Kyuubi, and slunk back into the darkness, healing the damage to her throat in a grudging gesture of goodwill. Yugito looked the contract over again; there were no loopholes. She was free. She was free to leave this village, where every day brought pain, where she couldn't sleep at night for the whispering of the dead in their graves, where the closest she got to true happiness was the feeling of her katana separating limb from torso.

She was free.

"I will go with you," she said, raising a hand to forestall Uzumaki's whoop of joy, "on the condition that you use your demonic chakra to reinforce my seal when necessary. Do we have an agreement?"

"Done," Uzumaki said immediately, before the folded uniforms and supplies that Gaara was looking over caught his eye. "Oh, awesome!" He bounced over to the table and pulled one of the black ANBU shirts out, poking at the metal plates sewn to the sleeves.

Yugito pushed herself upright and limped to stand by the other two, reaching out for her katana and buckling it across her back. Uzumaki shamelessly dropped his pants, pulling the new clothing on and grabbing as many of the piled kunai as he could.

"This is so cool," he babbled, taking packets of senbon and putting them in the weapons pouches attached to the belt. Gaara disappeared to the bathroom with his new uniform, the door shutting behind him.

"Here." She threw a backpack at Uzumaki. "Fill that with the rations in the cabinet." They were unpalatable, but nutritious, and easy to cook. The blond yanked open the door and began shoving the tins in, while Gaara emerged, clothed head-to-toe in black cloth and steel plates, the blank white mask of an ANBU initiate slung at his hip.

Yugito looked at her own porcelain mask, the face of a tiger in flames, before placing it back in her closet. She wouldn't need it where she was going, away from the village that had scorned her all her life. Gaara packed the rest of the weapons, while she concentrated on rope, wire, and water. The backpacks filled quickly, and they finally stood, ready to go, at the doorway.

She looked back at her apartment one last time, wondering if she could burn the damn place to the ground without causing undue alarm, but rejected it. The blood-stained apartment, thick with the stench of pain and stress, could stay, a testament that she had existed in this solitary corner of the world.

"Let's go give this thing to your mom," Uzumaki said, waving the contract in his hand. She turned away, closed her eye, took a deep breath, letting the red beads on her left arm- the last thing her mother had ever given her, the last birthday gift she had ever received- click through her fingers, and nodded.

She would say goodbye.

If only to end it.

* * *

Naruto watched Yugito look at the walls surrounding her childhood home with sadness in her eyes, the walls that were built to protect a family that abandoned her.

"You going to be okay?"

Pale blue eyes flickered in his direction. She nodded, and Gaara, as if he had been waiting for her approval, opened the gate. She walked in tentatively, a small woman all in black, confronted with the place that she had left so long ago, and had spent her entire life trying to recreate.

Yugito lifted a hand, paused, steeling herself, and knocked on the door. The same sound of locks and chains being undone, before the door opened a crack.

Pale eyes, so alike, met each other, before Hiroko pulled the door open, her voice trembling.

"Nii-san? What- what are you _doing_ here?" Her eyes darted about, as if punishment for her daughter's presence was waiting to come swooping in. Yugito swallowed, bowing her head, and pushed the contract at her.

"Here, mother." Hiroko took it with trembling hands, looked it over, then up at Yugito. "Nii-san- I- I don't know how I can thank you? This-" she shook the paper, her eyes disbelieving, "this is a tremendous gift."

Yugito didn't smile. "You want to thank me?" Her voice was bitter, but softened, filling with the last sparks of hope from the child that died so long ago. "Call me your daughter. Just once, before I go."

Hiroko swallowed, her face going bloodless and white, her eyes filling with tears as her throat worked, spasmed, trying to produce the sounds of a word long dead and put to dust. Naruto felt his chest ache with sadness for them both, for two women staring at each other across a great divide, unable to reach out for pain.

The silence was as loud as thunder.

Yugito finally smiled, a bitter, twisted thing. "Your silence…" Her fist lashed out and slammed into the drywall of the house in a spasm of shocking fury, cracking plaster and sending a spiderweb of cracks racing over the wall as Hiroko flinched, face bloodless with terror.

"That's it, then." Yugito's voice rattled in her chest, flat as the plains of Kusa, empty of everything. "That's it." And she turned, her eyes devoid of hope and life, and walked away.

* * *

**Annotations**

"_How long the night seems to one kept awake by pain._" - Bernard Joseph Saurin, from _Blanche et Guiscard._


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** I hope you enjoy this chapter; please review with any comments or criticism you may have._  
_

* * *

_Tired of living inside my mind  
Another casualty out of time for us  
Faith, hope, love,  
Be enough_  
- 'Faith Hope Love' by Starsailor

* * *

Naruto had quickly come to decide that Yugito was an even worse traveling partner than Gaara. Gaara didn't say much, but Naruto could at least have a conversation with him that lasted more than a minute, even though Gaara only really talked about all the ways he could kill people. Yugito, on the other hand- he squinted resentfully at her, far ahead and flowing down the mountainside in a way that made water look clumsy- hardly talked at all, snapped at him when she did, and was cynical, unpleasant, and arrogant.

He did have to admit though, that even as injured and exhausted as she was, she did manage to tire them out every day. They were only two days out from Kumo, but he thought that they had covered at least sixty miles. Gaara was behind him, completely fixated on the pine trees that towered for hundreds of feet above them, green and nice-smelling.

"Gaara?" He looked back. Gaara was ignoring him and staring at an eagle's nest above, enthralled by the giant glob of sticks. '_Whatever. I'll just talk to Yugito._' He jogged to her side. "Hey, Yugito?" She glanced at him, her tone frosty.

"What?" His common sense was screaming for him to shut up and leave her to her brooding, but one gloomy bastard on the trip was enough. He coughed and finally said lamely,

"Sooo… where exactly are we _going_?" She shifted the pack on her back and replied,

"Moyagakure, the Village Hidden in the Haze. It's a vassal village." He blinked, watching her move silently through the woods, while his feet crunched on pine needles and sent small rocks flying, as if she belonged there, as if she was a lynx in human form, bred and born to the wilderness of the mountains, to the glaciers that glittered white and diamond-bright above.

"A _what?_" Yugito turned her head to look at him fully, quirking a brow. "You don't know what a vassal village is?" Gaara caught up to them, now interested in the conversation, his red hair bright against the surrounding dusk.

"I don't know either," he said. Yugito halted, looking around for something, before she went to a tree and looked closely at the moss, running her thin fingers over the gray, stringy stuff.

"We're on the right track," she said.

"How do you know that?" She came back to them, the lines of tension in her face smoothing out, as if a giant worry had been lifted free.

"The moss. Moyagakure cultivates a specific kind of moss on the trees that lead to it. But moss is difficult to tell apart if you're not an expert, so only the shinobi of the two villages know how to tell which trees to use. We have another three hours, and then we'll be there."

Naruto looked up at the sunlight that filtered down through the pine branches, golden and warm like amber. The air was full of birds calling to each other, the buzzing of insects, and mushrooms grew in the shade of fallen logs. Yugito had picked them as they moved, like a horse grazing on wild grass. It was beautiful, peaceful, and even the two cynics he was traveling with couldn't ruin his good mood.

"Okay, great. What's a vassal village?" Gaara added his voice to the conversation,

"I wish to know as well."

Yugito sighed, muttering, "What do they teach children these days," and said,

"A vassal village is a small village, like Moyagakure, that has its own shinobi and its own techniques, but is still beholden to the large village of the land. It works as symbiosis: Kumogakure offers its protection to Moyagakure, and in return, Moyagakure gives Kumo its excess food. The more powerful shinobi of Moyagakure are sent to study at Kumo's Academy, and have to serve a three-year tour of duty in Kumo's shinobi force."

Naruto ran ahead a little bit, turning around and walking backwards, stepping over the rotting logs that littered their path. Yugito sounded almost like Iruka when she talked, but it wasn't nearly as interesting as Iruka could have made it sound. "Got it!" Yugito's lips quirked up.

"So concludes your lesson in Shinobi Politics 101." Gaara wandered off again, distracted by the tracks of a lynx.

They walked for another hour, Naruto babbling at a silent Yugito about Konoha and all the places he remembered, before Yugito paused, glancing at the setting sun that washed the entire forest in gold, the sky above purple with the oncoming night.

"We'll camp here."

"Good," Gaara said, slinging his pack to the ground and kneeling, calling the minerals in the ground before him to the surface to serve as a fire pit. A stream ran through the woods not too far from where they were, clear and frigid. Naruto went and filled the water bottles and the pot, while Gaara broke dead branches off the logs they had passed.

Yugito came and knelt by him, washing her hands in the stream. "I must say," she said, "despite your immaturity, you have impressed me with your stamina."

Naruto blinked, unsure if it was a compliment or an insult. "Uhh… thanks, I… guess." He finished filling the pot and sat back on his haunches, turning to her.

"So, have you been to Moyagakure before?" Yugito shrugged, standing and shaking her hands dry.

"Yes." He tilted his head, asking,

"Did you like it?" Yugito's brow furrowed, her mouth flattening into a thin line. She looked completely unsure how to deal with the question, hooking her thumbs into her belt loops and gazing at him meditatively.

Naruto shifted, uncomfortable with her penetrating gaze, wondering if he had done something wrong.

"You are the first person," she said slowly, "to ever ask me if I liked something." Her brow smoothed as she finished, "To answer your question, it was fine." She glanced away, stuffing her hands in her pocket, saying, so softly that it was nearly drowned by the burbling of the stream,

"Thank you." She turned and went back to the camp, leaving Naruto to gather up the pot and water bottle and lug them back.

He sat down, watching Yugito put together the fire with utter competence. '_Cool. I need to learn how to do that._' She dumped a tin of rations in the pot and set it on to boil, before sitting cross-legged before the fire. Gaara was on top of a nearby outcropping of moss-covered rock, staring at the waning moon that was rising in the east, half-hidden through the branches of the trees. An owl called, its hooting soft and low.

"You should unpack your sleeping roll," Yugito said finally. "You won't want to do anything after you eat except sleep." Naruto leaned back on his hands, sniffing as the spicy smell of the soup permeated the air.

"This is nice. I never got to really camp with Kakashi-sensei and the others; they were always grouchy and wanted to just go straight to bed after walking. You do this a lot?" As he spoke, he was dragging his sleeping roll out and spreading it. Yugito looked up from her contemplation of the fire, her blue eyes reflecting the firelight.

"Many times, on campaign." Gaara looked interested now, tearing his eyes away from the moon. Not that that was any surprise; he liked anything having to do with blood and death.

"Who were you up against?" Yugito looked up at him, unsmiling. "Kirigakure, then Kusagakure." Her tone indicated the subject was utterly closed. She leaned forward and ladled soup into the three metal bowls, passing one to him.

He drank it- it wasn't very good, but it was filling, and that was all he really wanted- and put the bowl next to the fire, to be dealt with in the morning, before lying down and watching Gaara go back to his rock through half-open eyes, watching Yugito stare at the fire for a long while, her arms around her knees, lower lip caught between her teeth. Finally, sleep came.

* * *

Naruto woke to a cold rain on his face, and turned to see Yugito opening a few tins of rations. His clothes were completely sodden, clinging to his skin. The sky was a flat, hopeless gray, the rain the sort of freezing drizzle that hovered on the edge of becoming snow without ever actually changing. Gaara was shivering, curled up by the fire in a little ball of black and red.

He got up, his back cracking as he moved, and packed his sleeping roll. "Let's go," Yugito said, tossing a ration tin at him and kicking dirt onto the fire. Gaara caught his tin in the sand, and got up very slowly, layering sand on his skin in an attempt to insulate himself.

Naruto prodded his ration bar of freeze-dried sticky rice with a finger before eating it. It was dry, salty, and sucked all the moisture in his mouth up as he swallowed. Yugito ate hers in three bites, used to the texture, and broke into a jog, making them follow her downhill.

He quickly grew sick of the mud squishing with each step and the incessant drip-dripping of raindrops off the leaves. Steam rose from his soaked clothes as he worked up a sweat, while Gaara spent the entirety of the time tramping ahead in sullen silence. Yugito seemed to find the entire thing to be a huge lark, loping tirelessly through the mud and the thickets, growing happier- or at least less angry- the further they got from Kumo.

There was nothing to look at except giant trees black with rain, nothing to listen to but the rain dripping and the muffled songs of the birds, nothing to do but continue squishing through the mud on their way down to the sea.

The boredom was total.

Then Yugito came back to walk beside them, spinning her kunai around her finger, and said, "Almost there."

The air changed, the smell different. He sniffed; sulfur? The trees began to thin, the bleary light growing stronger.

"Will there be any danger in this village?" Gaara said. Yugito slid her kunai back into its holster, hooking her thumbs underneath the straps of her pack.

"No. I saved them in the war against Kusa." That sounded interesting, so Naruto turned around, hoping she wouldn't kill him for asking.

"How'd you do that?" The trees ended, and they were in a clearing, with a thin bridge that didn't have railings arching over sulfurous, steaming water surrounding the walls. The walls were made of gray mud, the gates over the bridge open, with several shinobi standing at the entrance. Hot springs littered the clearing, belching mist into the air, giving the village its name.

"The village was under siege by the shinobi of Kusa. I was detailed to break the siege, and did so." A cold light flickered in Yugito's eyes as she looked at the bridge and the boiling water below. "I put the shinobi of Kusa to the sword, throwing their bodies into the moat."

Gaara looked down into the water, through the steam, and Naruto joined him, seeing the bleached bones of the shinobi littering the bottom, the empty eyes of the skulls staring up accusingly through the mist that curled through the white arcs of their jaws. Algae covered the bottom of the moat in a rainbow of colors. "Extremophiles," Gaara said, displaying his penchant for science all over again.

'_There must be hundreds of bodies down there_,' he realized, standing up from his crouch and feeling his sandals stick to the hot stone, the cold rain trickling down the back of his neck, plopping onto the stone where it boiled and turned to steam.

"Come," Yugito said, hitching her pack up and striding across the bridge. Naruto followed, while Gaara brought up the rear, his face grim. The rotten-egg-smelling clouds drifted about them, thick and white, and the skinny bridge shifted under their feet.

"They call the bridge Devil's Backbone," Yugito tossed over her shoulder, before halting in front of the shinobi that blocked her way, brown-haired and brown-eyed, with a long scar that trailed over his left eye. He spat at her feet, muttering,

"Nii." Yugito stared up into his face, tilting her head. Naruto surged forward, growling, only for Gaara to hold him back as Yugito said,

"You would treat me thus, Kaji, in my domain? Have you forgotten the dead at the bottom of the moat?" Gaara nudged Naruto in the side, jerking his head at Yugito's hand. Black fire was curling around her fingers, drifting like the tail of a cat.

There was a distant, soft clattering at the bottom of the moat.

The Moya shinobi- Kaji- blanched, and moved out of the way, gesturing for the other three to let Yugito through. They parted, and Naruto followed Yugito into the village, towing Gaara by the wrist. He made sure to flip Kaji off before entering the village, just to show solidarity.

The Village Hidden in the Haze was built of pale pinewood, the roads made with granite cobblestones. People surged around them, talking and laughing, the air thick with sulfur and the smell of roasting meat. Gaara hunched over, growling low in his throat as someone slammed into him.

Naruto kept a hold on Gaara, tracking Yugito through the crowd by keeping an eye out for her silver-blonde hair. She led them down narrow twisted streets lit by paper lanterns, through a plaza where a pig was roasting, wafting delicious smells into the air, and finally to a low, long building made of logs that connected to the wall.

A swinging sign identified the place as a barracks. Yugito gestured for them to go in first, and followed. Naruto stopped, staring down the long length of the room. Bunks stretched down, each with footlockers beside them. Several Moya shinobi were massed around a low table by the fieldstone fireplace, playing cards, but turned around as they entered, staring at them with cold eyes. One fingered a kunai.

"I thought you said we weren't in danger!" he hissed, letting her propel them down the aisle between the bunks to a set of three by the back entrance. She reached into her pocket and removed a key, unlocking a footlocker and slinging her pack into it before relieving them of theirs.

"We aren't."

"The look in their eyes would suggest otherwise," Gaara said, arms folded across his chest, green eyes flicking at the staring shinobi at the table uncomfortably. Yugito spared them a glance before dismissing them, locking the trunk and pocketing the key.

"Ignore them. They're nothing more than fodder." Naruto blinked at the callousness of her words, blurting,

"They're human." Yugito turned to him, brow arching.

"Exactly." She left the building and Gaara tried to follow, but Naruto pulled him aside.

"What, Uzumaki?" Naruto frowned.

"You're not bothered by that?" Gaara shrugged.

"By what?" He rolled his eyes and ran his hands through his hair in frustration,

"By _that!_ By the fact that she sees humans as 'fodder' or some shit!" Gaara blinked in recognition, relaxing as he understood the problem.

"Uzumaki, when did you find out that you were a jinchuuriki?" He shrugged.

"Six months ago?" Gaara 'hmm'ed thoughtfully, as if some important question had been answered.

"You were treated differently, but still called 'human'. And because you did not know that you were jinchuuriki, you had no reason to believe otherwise."

"Well, _yeah_, but-" Gaara held up a hand, cutting him off.

"Nii and I were raised as being non-human. When you grow up being told that you are not a human, not worth the same, and are treated badly by those people who flaunt their 'humanity' in front of you, you begin to hate all those who are human."

"But-" he held his hands out in entreaty, voice filled with conviction, "but we _are_ human, Gaara!" Gaara met his gaze evenly, head cocking to the side as he asked softly,

"Are we?"

* * *

It was sundown in the Village Hidden in the Haze, and Yugito sat cross-legged on the cool earth of the village graveyard, hands buried wrist-deep in the soil. Naruto paused at the gated entrance, afraid to disturb her.

Her slanted eyes were closed, silver-blonde hair thrown over one shoulder and cold raindrops trickling down her expressionless face. Her chest hardly moved; she could have been a statue.

She looked at peace.

'_Fuck it._' He opened the iron gate set into the low stone wall with a creak of hinges, watching her eyes open. She glanced in his direction, her eyes reflecting the dim light just like a cat's. He remembered hearing that cats had some weird film on the backs of their eyes that reflected light, and figured she had it too. Gaara would probably know what it was called, if he were here, but he wasn't; Gaara had decided to go to the village library instead.

He ambled over to her and waited for her nod before sitting down next to her, wrapping his arms around his knees.

"What brings you here, Uzumaki?" He laughed a little, scratched at the back of his head.

"Call me Naruto, it's easier. Besides, jinchuuriki have to stick together, right?" He looked over and saw her looking back thoughtfully.

"Yes. We do." He shifted on the wet ground, chewing on the inside of his cheek, wondering if he should ask.

"What are you doing?" Yugito turned away and looked down at where her hands disappeared into the earth. She closed her eyes for a moment, before pulling her hands free and dusting them off on her trousers.

"I-" She stopped, as if unsure whether to speak, and busied herself rewrapping the bandages around her wrists and lower arms, covering the faded, puckered scars from view, and finally sighed, long and low. "I was speaking to the dead." '_Huh?'_ He turned to face her more fully, leaning forward.

"Like, actually talking to them, or is that some weird figure of speech thing?" Yugito continued to wrap her arms, avoiding his gaze as she muttered,

"I can converse with them. It is one of the Nekomata's abilities."

"That is _so cool_!" Naruto bounced up and down in amazement, thinking of all the things you could do. You could find out secrets from the past, could talk to your great-grandparents, could learn from the people that had gone before, all manner of things. He stopped as he met Yugito's eyes, a bit wary of the weary, saddened gaze.

"No. No, Naruto, it's really not. It's-" she paused, struggling for a way to explain it. "It's helpful to me, because it calms the Nekomata, but I am-" she drew in a breath, and exhaled on a long sigh, looking down at her dirty hands, lying upturned on her knees, seamed with scars and the remnants of stitches.

"Make no mistake. When I listen to them- and that's all it is, listening, because they cannot hear me, they don't know that I am there- I am committing a sin. I am intruding on their lives and memories solely to make my own life easier by calming the Nekomata. I've become a bit of an addict, I suppose."

"Oh." His voice seemed very small all of a sudden, dwarfed by the silence of the cemetery and the weight of the thousands buried there. Yugito shook herself, as if dispelling some sort of clinging memory, and turned to him.

"Why were you looking for me?"

Naruto looked down and tore up a patch of grass, shredding it between his fingers. He'd spent a lot of the way from Kumo thinking about what Gaara had said- about using Kyuubi's chakra, instead of avoiding it- and now he wasn't sure what to think.

"Naruto?" He licked dry lips and said, his voice almost drowned out by the incessant boiling of the springs outside the walls,

"Gaara told me- when we got ready to go up against the Raikage- that the fact that the Kyuubi's chakra is limitless makes it a big asset, so I should start using it more often." He looked over at her; she was intent, her eyes fixed on his face. "But- well, this is stupid, and it doesn't really matter anymore, now that I can't ever go home again, but before I left, I wanted to be Hokage, so people would respect me."

Yugito made a noise of encouragement. "And I got to thinking, after Gaara said that, I don't _want_ to use Kyuubi's chakra, because if I become Hokage, or beat the Raikage, or do anything special just because I'm jinchuuriki and can rely on Kyuubi, than that's just cheating, and I don't want to be a great shinobi just because I'm jinchuuriki. I want to be a great shinobi because I worked for it, not because it was given to me."

He looked over at Yugito, who was staring up at where the stars were coming out, white pinpricks of light in the sky, half-hidden by the steam blowing over the village. Yugito mulled his words over for a minute, while he concentrated on shredding more and more grass into tiny piles.

"Do you know any techniques that don't rely on the Kyuubi's chakra?" Naruto blinked. He could make clones, but all he really ever did with that was make a ridiculous amount of them, and that was because of Kyuubi; he could summon Gamabunta, but that was because of Kyuubi, too; and really, if he had to admit it to himself, all he could do was simple stuff.

"Just simple stuff, I guess, like hiding in the ground. My sensei spent most of his time teaching Sasuke, the other guy on the team." Yugito glanced at him, swallowed nervously, and said,

"I- I could teach you some lightning jutsu from Kumo, if you want? You don't have to- it's not like-" Naruto cut her off,

"You'd do that? Really?" Yugito shrugged.

"Yes. Why not? You said that jinchuuriki have to stick together." Naruto whooped and threw himself at her, wrapping his arms around her waist. She stiffened immediately, hand going to a kunai, before letting it drop as he babbled,

"Awesome! Thank you, this is going to be so cool-" he felt her arm come up to curl about his shoulders lightly, and looked up to where she was steadfastly looking away, bottom lip caught in her teeth, as if terrified to look at him and see rejection in his eyes.

"You okay?" She looked down at him and withdrew her arm.

"I-" her voice was gruff, "I- yes."

"Uzumaki. Nii." Gaara's deep voice came from the gate, and he turned to see the other jinchuuriki there, holding a scroll in his hand.

"I found the name of the Hokou's jinchuuriki."


	7. Chapter 7

_Oh, it won't be long  
Before their hold is broken  
No, it won't be long  
Until we find our home_  
- 'Born Again' by Starsailor

* * *

The three jinchuuriki sat around a table in the basement of the village library, hidden by shelves and tattered curtains. The archive room that they were in was far below ground, made out of concrete, ridiculously cold, and could easily have been remodeled into a torture chamber with very little effort. Gaara pushing stacks of paper out of the way, found the scroll he was looking for and unrolled it, letting them see the graceful brushstrokes that spread across the almost-translucent rice paper. 

"According to this census, her name is Moriko Nakano."

Yugito reached across the table and took the scroll. She leaned back in her chair, put up her sandaled feet on the table and ignored the librarian's irritated glare as the older man passed them by, unloading yet another scroll by Gaara's side before scurrying away, muttering something about 'foul demons' as he went.

"Cool name; how old is she?"

Gaara looked up, reached for another scroll, and looked it over, running thin fingers through his blood-red hair in frustration. The air conditioner in the corner whirred steadily on, coughing out clouds of dust at intervals.

"Almost all of the records relating to her have been destroyed, but the fact that the Hokou attacked six months ago would suggest her age."

Naruto shrugged unconcernedly in acknowledgement, then ducked the killer glare as Yugito lowered the scroll she was looking at, blue eyes aflame.

"Say again?"

"Around six months," Gaara repeated. Yugito's feet came off the table, the scroll landing on the wood with a thump as she leaned in, lips peeling back from her teeth, pale fingers stroking over the mirror-bright finish of her kunai.

"We are not going to go traipsing all over the continent dragging a six-month-old child around with us. Children cry incessantly, eat often, tire easily, and are generally difficult to care for in a home, let alone on the road."

Naruto frowned, confused. "You're a girl, right? Aren't you supposed to like babies?"

Yugito glanced at him, lip curling, eyes narrowing in contempt. "That comment is so asinine I'm not even going to dignify it with a response."

Gaara broke in impatiently, pushing another scroll into Naruto's face, "Here's the Hokou." The animal in the delicate watercolor painting was a huge white wolf, its five tails curled in front of its muzzle, scythe-like claws digging into the bark beneath its feet. Its eyes were a dark forest green, resembling the leaves of the tree the Hokou was curled around in a protective fashion, with vines trailing over the snowy fur. "Supposedly the master of illusions, possessing the abilities to control plant life. Of course, it is doubtful that the jinchuuriki will be able to utilize either of those abilities, considering her age."

"We should leave her here and pick her up after collecting the others," Yugito said, folding her arms across her chest, mouth flattening into a thin line. Naruto stared, unable to say anything. It was so cruel of her to say that, to condemn a baby to the life she herself had lived.

"I don't think that would be advisable," Gaara said.

"Why not?"

"Well- because she's a _baby_!" Naruto interjected.

Yugito shifted her implacable gaze to him. "And?"

Gaara sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in aggravation, and shut them both up with a well-timed cough as he scribbled the girl's address down.

"We should check on the girl's living conditions, if nothing else. After seeing those, we can then come to a decision."

"I like that idea," Naruto said, resisting the urge to stick his tongue out at Yugito. Of course, knowing her, she'd probably chop it off for shits and giggles. Yugito grunted assent, Gaara stood, brushing dust off his arms. Naruto bolted for the exit, wanting to spend as little time in the library as possible.

Naruto slowed as he reached the street, waited for the other two to catch up, and walked backwards as he talked, nose wrinkling as the ever-present rotten-egg smell of the hot springs drifted over the walls.

The crowds were out in full force, all running to and fro, with shinobi standing on almost every street corner, arms folded, glaring at the three of them as they walked. Everywhere he looked, he could see some sign of the Hokou's attack, from a building with vines still twining through the broken logs, as if still attempting to pull it down, to the broken people that limped through the streets on twisted limbs, missing eyes and ears.

The people around them tried to avoid them, their eyes suspicious, a few going so far as to cross the street entirely when they saw them coming. _'Although it makes sense, since we're traveling with a known jinchuuriki and their village almost got destroyed so recently.'_

"Hey, Yugito, where we going once we get out of this place?"

Gaara answered for her, pointing down a narrow alleyway, "That way. And I assume we'd be heading to Kirigakure to find whatever jinchuuriki exists there."

"Affirmative," Yugito said, elbowing a passing merchant out of the way and catching up to them. The houses they passed became smaller and smaller, dingier and dingier, full of dust and then ceased altogether, giving way to crumbled buildings and ruined homes, remnants of the Hokou's attack.

The sounds of laughter and villager's voices ceased as they neared their destination, seemingly drowned out by an all-encompassing silence. The world seemed muffled from here, but for the eternal bubbling of the springs. The cobblestones under their feet became blackened and scorched, and it seemed as if they were all alone at the end of the world, the last three people on earth. Naruto wondered briefly if Konoha had looked this bad after the Kyuubi's attack, then snorted at his own stupidity. It had probably looked worse, seeing as how Konoha had at least three times the population of Moya.

"I see shinobi up ahead," Yugito said, shifting to let the handle of the katana slung across her back come within easy reach. As they came closer, Naruto saw them too: two ANBU standing by a leaning shed, the door of the shed chained shut and locked with steel chains, the thick padlock dangling in ridiculous testament to how much Moyagakure feared the infant girl locked within the shed.

"What do you want?" The ANBU who spoke was a woman, her voice harsh in accusation. _'How dare you come here,'_ she seemed to be saying, _'you jinchuuriki, to this place, the graveyard of thousands buried in the rubble by what lives inside you still. How dare you exist at all.'_

"We have come to inspect the jinchuuriki," Gaara said, his tone brooking no argument. "And if you will not let us, we will simply have to force our way in." Gaara grinned, his eyes aflame with mordant bloodlust, with Shukaku's hunger for blood, a hunger that could never be fulfilled. Naruto, watching his friend, was... almost afraid of him, of the beast that lived in the wasteland inside him, and wondered if he would ever find a way to assuage Gaara's pain without death. "And I do not think you would like it if we did."

The woman took a step forward, wire spooling itself out between her fingers, razor-sharp and glittering in the misty sunlight, blurred by the clouds of smoke that drifted over the village day in and day out.

"You can try," she spat- _'You idiot, you just provoked him!_' Naruto thought, too late to tell her to shut up- and let her chakra sing along the wire, blue and gleaming.

Gaara's eyes widened with glee at the affront to his power, his eyes flickering yellow. Sand slashed up from the ground, coiled around her legs, her waist, forced her arms to her side and bound them, encircled her chest and the fluttering pulse at her throat. She choked, face purpling.

"Yuki!" The other ANBU cried, forcing himself to stay still, to keep from drawing the Demon of the Sand's attention. His eyes were black with despair. He glanced at Naruto in mute appeal.

"Gaara," Naruto said, stretching out a hand, "Gaara, don't do this. Don't give in." Sand slithered towards him, Shukaku's attempt to silence the one who made his host fight against him. Yugito stepped in front of him, electricity crackling from her hands. The sand recoiled, hissing, as Naruto took another step towards where the woman hung suspended in air, her legs kicking against the sand.

"Gaara?" Yellow-green eyes flicked in his direction, not recognizing him, and he bared his teeth, tightening the sand. "Gaara. Listen to me. Let her go." Another step. Sand coiled around his ankle, scraping the skin raw as he pulled free, moving closer. "Gaara, let her go or I'm going to hit you."

A low crackle of laughter. "Okay." He cocked his fist and let it fly.

Cracks spiderwebbed out from where his fist impacted, sand flaking off in large patches. The sand loosened, the yellow taint in Gaara's eyes disappearing, the woman- Yuki- falling to the cobblestones, hands going to the bruises ringing her throat.

"What?" Gaara blinked, confused, before he saw the woman. "Oh." He tilted his head. "I see. Thank you, Uzumaki."

Naruto rubbed his aching hand, grinning. "Not a problem. Now, about the kid?"

The ANBU he'd addressed nodded hastily, "Of- of course!" and unlocked the padlock, pulling the chains out of the loops and stepping out of the way. Naruto curled his hand around the rusty handle and pulled. With a groan of aged wood, the door screeched open, enough for them- they were all short and skinny for their ages, victims of malnutrition- to slide through the opening into the shed.

The shed smelled of rot and mold, filthy water sloshing around their feet as they moved, and it was dark, hot, and dank, the only light the small beam shining in from the doorway. He looked around, unable to see in the darkness.

Yugito spotted it first, her cat's eyes put to good use. "There." She pointed at a rusty crib over in the back corner, and sloshed over, Naruto and Gaara following. Plants twined around the legs of the crib, brown and dying. Naruto leaned over, his fists clenching on the bar. The rusted metal cracked under his grip.

Moriko Nakano, jinchuuriki of the Hokou, lay naked on a dirty mattress, her belly swollen and distended from hunger, her closed eyes sunken in a head that seemed two times too big for the skinny, emaciated body it belonged to. The dark hair on her head was matted with blood, stuck to her skin. Her tiny ribs were clearly visible, pressing against the thin skin like the bones of a bird, her chest hardly rising, as if each breath was too much of an effort to take. Her skin was inflamed and infected, reddened and hot to the touch, unwashed and smeared with filth.

The black whorls of the seal, this seal made of twisting vines and plants, spiraled out from around her left eye, a permanent mark of what she was. And on her wasted hands and feet were the true signs of her tenant: each fingernail and toenail had been replaced by hard, black claws, curving gently in the manner of a dog's claws.

"Gaara." His own voice sounded very far away, distorted through the red thunder of the blood in his ears, boiling with fury. His friend came to his side, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"Yes."

He felt his lips crack in something resembling a smile as he reached into the crib, touching the tiny hand.

"I'm sorry I didn't let you kill them."

Gaara said nothing. He swallowed and forced out as calmly as he could, "Ask the man out there when the last time they fed her was." Gaara nodded and left the shed, the door closing behind him. Naruto looked up at Yugito, who was staring into the crib with muted horror.

"And you said we should have left her here."

Yugito met his gaze. "Yes. I was wrong."

He could see how much it pained her to admit that, but ignored it, looking back down in the crib as he reached down, slid his hands underneath her, feeling the slender vertebrae of her spine press into his palms, and lifted her up, holding her close.

"Hey, Moriko," he whispered. She stirred, eyelids flickering, and finally opened them, gazing up solemnly into his eyes. Her eyes were the pale green of a new leaf, the look in them grave and much too old for her age. Yugito watched her for a moment, then turned and left the shed in a clatter of steel.

He heard screams from outside, but ignored them. Anyone who would starve a child deserved what they got. "Hey, Moriko-chan," he tested the name, the way it rolled off his tongue. _'A good name, the way it means 'nature child.'_ "Ready to get out of here?" She blinked, made a weak attempt at stretching a skinny arm towards his face while making some sort of babbling noise.

"Right," he agreed. He looked into the crib- not really a crib, more like a cage- one last time, caught sight of a wadded blanket in the corner, and grabbed it with his free hand, wrapping her in it.

They left the shed. Naruto paused as he saw what was happening: Gaara seemed to be methodically crushing the male ANBU's hand, while Yugito had one foot planted on the woman's throat, her eyes fixed on the woman squirming in the dirt.

"What'd he say, Gaara?"

Crack! The man howled, thrashing, and Gaara watched him twitch with cruel enjoyment. "He said that it had been two weeks since she was fed. I assume the Hokou was keeping her alive with his chakra." Naruto closed his eyes, teeth grinding against each other as he controlled his chakra against the way it wanted to lash out and burn the entire village of Moyagakure to dust.

"Leave them. We have more important things to worry about now." Gaara broke another bone, Yugito let her heel grind in one last time, mashing Yuki's vocal chords into pulp, before they both turned away and went with him.

"We'll need more supplies," Yugito said. "I think a good investment would be some sort of sedative to keep her quiet while we travel; we wouldn't want to be given away because of her cries."

The ruins of the houses crunched beneath his feet as he walked, watching Moriko's eyes dart about, staring at a world she had been denied for six long months. "I bet there's some medical jutsu that'll do that, so we wouldn't have to carry pills or whatever with us. Do you know any?"

Yugito shrugged as they came out onto the main street. The people around them suddenly drew in a collective breath as they saw the tiny baby cradled in Naruto's arm, scrambling to get away from them. Naruto watched them run with sadistic joy, watched them fall over themselves to escape from a child who couldn't harm them if she tried. "I can't perform medical jutsu, or have them performed on me. Something about the Nekomata's chakra prevents it."

"Well, shit. Gaara?"

"No." The four jinchuuriki strode down the empty street, alone, the people of Moyagakure having scattered to the alleyways to stare out timidly, as if the jinchuuriki were suddenly going to transform and kill them all.

_'I've got half a mind to do it anyway,'_ Naruto thought, feeling how light the weight in his arms was. But for now, they had saved her.

* * *

"Thank you for coming," Tsunade, the Godaime Hokage of Konoha, said, looking around at the four teams of genin and their sensei in her office. "I have some news about Naruto Uzumaki." Her eyes drifted to the remnants of Team Seven, to Sakura, who stood straight and tall, refusing to let the tears brimming in her eyes fall, to Sasuke, who was slouching in the doorway, staring at the floor, blood welling in the cuts on his palms from his fingernails digging into his flesh, to Kakashi, who met her gaze evenly, despite the aching sorrow in his eyes. 

"What about that traitor?" Shikamaru said, his lips twisting into a sneer at the mention of Uzumaki's name. Neji Hyuuga had straightened when she mentioned Uzumaki, his attention focusing completely, while his cousin Hinata had sniffled loudly, Kiba's arm stealing around her shoulders.

"The S-level missing-nin Naruto Uzumaki was recently spotted departing Moyagakure, the Village Hidden in the Haze, a vassal village in the Land of Lightning." Kiba's head jerked up.

"S-level? What do you mean, S-level? The mutt couldn't even graduate on his own!" Kurenai's red eyes flickered to her student, and she placed a hand on his shoulder. Tsunade looked down at her papers, at the photo of the smiling blond boy, his face smeared with paint. _'So sad, to see the Kyuubi lurking in those guileless eyes.'_ She wondered what would have happened if she had known him, whether she would have found him irritating or endearing. As it was, she only saw the demon in him, and hated him for throwing away Jiraiya's gifts and the gifts of Konoha.

"I've received authorization from the Council to tell you why he's classified as such," she said slowly, raising her eyes. The sensei met her eyes, unsurprised. Tsunade closed her eyes, wishing for Sandaime's forgiveness, and said,

"The three people Uzumaki are traveling with are jinchuuriki, the human containers of demons, and as such, they receive power from those demons. There are nine demons, and nine jinchuuriki."

She saw comprehension dawn on Hinata's face, her sobs growing in volume, in Ino's, who bit her lip until it bled, in Sakura's, whose lower lip trembled, to the rest of the genin, who had been beguiled by the boy.

"Naruto Uzumaki is jinchuuriki."

"Well- I mean, that Gaara kid, Sasuke could have beaten him, and he was a jinchuuriki," Kiba protested. Sasuke swallowed hard, and admitted, the words a bitter pill,

"No. I couldn't. He beat me, and would've killed me if Naruto hadn't stepped in. Hokage-sama, when Naruto was fighting us-" he hesitated, but plunged on, "there was a red chakra surrounding him. It looked and smelled like blood, but it was chakra, and it was strong- stronger than Kakashi-sensei."

"Yes. You need to understand, the boy from the Sand- Gaara- he was a jinchuuriki, but-" she said slowly, willing them to understand the danger that lurked inside Uzumaki's frame, "he was only the vessel of the one-tail, Shukaku."

The genins' eyes widened. Tsunade plunged ahead, "Uzumaki is the vessel of the Nine-Tailed Fox, the Kyuubi, who can destroy mountains and boil the seas, and if he were to give himself over to the Kyuubi-" she sighed, "Well, the Shukaku vessel could have destroyed Konoha without too much trouble. Think what the Kyuubi could do."

"But-" she held up a hand, "he is not invincible. Uzumaki is only a genin, with genin techniques, despite the demon inside him. One of your teams could defeat him without too much trouble, and _must_ defeat him and bring him back, willing or no."

"He is dangerous. We need him back, if only to keep him from attacking us one day." Lee stepped forward on his newly-healed leg,

"What about the other jinchuuriki?" Tsunade shuffled through her papers until she came to the latest report,

"He is currently traveling with the jinchuuriki of Shukaku, Gaara of the Sand-" Lee flinched, but did his best to hide it, "the jinchuuriki of the Nekomata, Yugito Nii from Kumogakure, and the jinchuuriki of Hokou, Moriko Nakano from Moyagakure."

"Gaara can be defeated with sufficient strength and speed. We have no intel on Yugito Nii's abilities, due to our diplomatic situation with Kumogakure, but Moriko Nakano is a six-month-old child, and thus no threat. It is obvious, however, that Uzumaki is collecting the jinchuuriki. I have sent out emissaries to the other Kages, and I've found out where every jinchuuriki is located."

The genin leaned in, all interested despite themselves in the jinchuuriki. "Uzumaki and his companions are heading to Kirigakure to acquire the Sanbi. The Yonbi jinchuuriki is in Numagakure in the Land of Swamps; Rokubi is in Kerumigakure, the Village Hidden in the Smoke, which is a vassal village to us; Shichibi is in Iwagakure, the Village Hidden in Earth, and Hachibi is in Kusagakure, Village Hidden in the Grass."

She cleared her throat and looked up from her paper. "I've looked over Uzumaki's profile, and found that he is weakest in Taijutsu. Therefore," she looked at Team Gai, "it is your mission to go to Kirigakure, find Uzumaki, defeat him by whatever means necessary, and bring him back. I've secured diplomatic immunity for you. You have a week to make it to Kirigakure."

"Dismissed." The genin teams filed out of her office, unnaturally silent.

Tsunade stared down at the photo of Uzumaki, at the laughing blond boy with the demon lurking in his eyes.

_'Why did you abandon us? Why did you leave the people who cared for you, the team who protected you, the friends who loved you? What reason could you have?_

_Why?'_

* * *

**A/N:** Review, please?_  
_

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	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone who's reviewed. To answer a question left by an anonymous reviewer, the pairings are still up in the air. There will be no pairings evident until after the time skip; at this point in the game, I'm more focused on the plot. Also, if you have questions, I've started a forum for them. It's an easier way to get answers. The URL is in my profile. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

_One day you will see  
And dare to come down to me  
C'mon, c'mon now take the chance  
That's right, let's dance_  
- 'Devil's Dance' by Metallica

* * *

The rickety pier seemed to stretch infinitely into the mist with its wooden planks, turned silver with salt, jutting out over the churning sea. Naruto shifted impatiently from foot to foot, juggling Moriko in one hand and the bag of supplies in the other as they waited for the ferry to the Land of Water. 

Moriko had been pretty good for the two weeks of walking it had taken them to get down to the port, except for the last two nights, when she had gotten colic and spent the entire night shrieking, pummeling him in the chest, and refusing to be consoled. Yugito had threatened to stuff a sock down her throat before finally giving up and stomping off into the woods to find some other place to sleep, while Gaara had covered himself in sand and spent the nights muttering darkly about something-or-other.

He was completely drained, so far beyond tired that he couldn't even sleep. Everything seemed muffled and gray. His bones ached with every movement, his thoughts had slowed down and his memories were hard to find. He looked over his shoulder at the other two, who were standing back on shore, wreathed in the mist that blew in off the ocean.

Yugito's eyes were rimmed with circles, making her look like Gaara, and her skin was blotchy from exhaustion. The hair that she took such pride in was sticking every which way. She looked like utter crap, and Naruto almost regretted taking Moriko, considering the stress it was putting on Yugito, who hated dragging Moriko all over the continent.

Gaara looked like he always did: only the slight lines of tension around his mouth betrayed his irritation with Moriko's constant howling. He leaned against the wall of the boathouse, his eyes half-shut and head lolling forward.

"There's the boat," Yugito said as she came up to him, glancing at Moriko, who lay sleeping in the sling he had fashioned out of an extra shirt, the black vines of the seal inked on her face standing out against the surrounding gray.

"Cool!" He turned back around and watched the rowboat slip silently out of the mists, oars dipping into the black water. The boat pulled up beside the pier, the ferryman tipping back his straw hat and peering up at them out of a face weathered by salt spray and storms.

"How many?"

"Four," Yugito said. The ferryman blinked beady eyes and named a sum that wiped the smile off Naruto's face. For that much money, they could rent an apartment in Konoha for a month! What possible reason could Kirigakure have for pushing their prices up so high? Yugito didn't even argue, but only nodded, and handed over the last of their money.

The ferryman pocketed it, grunting, "All aboard." Yugito threw their packs in, making the boat sink lower in the water, and climbed in after them, settling herself at the bow. Naruto stretched out a leg after her, found a foothold, and gingerly stepped in, settling Moriko on the seat next to him. He turned around when Gaara did not come.

"Gaara, come on!" The other boy was standing on the very edge of the pier, staring at the boat and rocking pensively back and forth on the balls of his feet.

"What, are you scared of water or something?"

Pale green eyes flicked up, Gaara's lips twisting in a scowl.

"I am not afraid of the water, Uzumaki. I never learned to swim."

Naruto glanced at Yugito, who was keeping totally out of the conversation, her gaze fixed on the mists that skimmed over the ocean whitecaps. _'No help there.'_

"The boat's not going to sink, Gaara," he said, standing up and wobbling as the boat rocked underneath his feet. "If it sinks, I can swim, and I'm sure Yugito can, too." Gaara contemplated the boat one more time then with a fatalistic sigh, eased himself into the boat, sitting down beside Naruto.

The ferryman cast off the rope and pushed the boat away from the dock, the oars dipping into the water, the shore and the pier melting away into the mists.

The water was black, the salty wind biting with a chill as the boat slipped smoothly through the cresting waves. Moriko woke up and began to fuss, so Naruto picked her up and held her on his knee, letting her watch the waves go by. Gaara's hands clenched into white-knuckled fists on the planks, his breathing becoming shallower the further they got from shore. Naruto put his free hand over Gaara's in an attempt to comfort, feeling the sand rasp against his palm as Gaara's hand turned over, skinny fingers curling around Naruto's.

Yugito was silent, her gaze fixed on the silhouettes of low black islands that loomed in the distance. There were seabirds squawking loudly, their white shapes diving into the water to surface with fish wriggling on their beaks, the dark shapes of whales passing by beneath them.

A long hour passed, silent but for Gaara's ragged breathing and Moriko's soft noises of happiness, before the ferryman maneuvered them around a headland of black boulders surrounded by the tide, the pitted rocks so close that Naruto could have reached out and touched them if he wanted. The island was long and low, with something resembling a mountain jutting up from the northern end, the only high point of ground on the island.

"We fought here in the Kiri War," Yugito finally said, looking at the long beach with something akin to wearied affection. Naruto turned to look more closely at the alcoves in the rock, scanning the tiny caves before jerking back with a cry of disgust, his stomach twisting in repulsion. White bone, bleached by the salty wind and the ceaseless pounding of the waves, gleamed from within, the curves of rib cages and the symmetrical wings of pelvises spots of brightness in the clammy darkness of the caves. Red crabs scuttled out of sight, disturbed by his presence, hiding themselves in the rotting lengths of seaweed strewn over the rocks like a woman's hair.

"There are caves lower down, that you can go into at low tide," she continued. "We took the island after many assaults on the mountain, but several squads of shinobi escaped the battle and holed up in the rock caves." Naruto glanced back at the ferryman with apprehension, but Yugito only snorted at his worry. 'I guess she thinks he's fodder, too,' he thought bitterly, still rankling from Yugito's rampant apathy.

"We offered them terms of surrender," she said, "but they refused. The shinobi of Kiri are renowned for refusing to give up, even when it would be better for them to do so." Her smile was twisted. "So we waited until the tide was low, and burned them alive in the caves." Gaara's eyes finally opened, the Sand-nin straightening.

"Did you do it for propaganda purposes?"

Yugito shrugged.

"No. We did it because we wanted to."

Naruto winced at her honesty, at her simple amorality, her disregard for all human life, and wondered what had broken inside her brain, what neural connections had been severed through neglect, to make her care so little for others.

The island receded behind them, the remnants of a thousand shinobi left to the wind and waves.

* * *

Neji Hyuuga leaned against the walls of the gatehouse of Kiri, the damp wall sapping the warmth from him. He tilted his head back to stare up at the high walls, their tops bristling with barbed wire and spikes, the guards that walked the walls swathed in black, swords at their sides. 

Kirigakure had been built at the top of a mesa, and the island stretched away beneath them, the only access a long path that wound back and forth up the side of the cliff.

Lee and Gai were involved in their own training, both of them balancing on top of the spikes with their arms at their sides. Tenten was throwing kunai, one after another, into a nearby stump, her hands moving at an incredible rate.

The Village Hidden in the Mist was disturbing: everyone hurried through the streets with weapons in hand, and it wasn't unusual at all to see old blood staining the black streets, a remnant of Kiri's bloody past. There were monuments to the dead of the many wars Kiri had fought everywhere, all commemorating genocidal acts against their clans.

Neji had explored the village for a few days, watching the Academy students go through their punishing routines. The instructors had been cruel, forcing the younger students to swim from one edge of the harbor to another in the freezing rain, weights attached to their limbs; making them train with swords; slashing each other with kunai; breaking each other's bones. He had seen one boy with an eye that was so badly injured that it would need to be removed.

"Neji," Tenten called. He came back to himself, pushing off the wall and coming to stand by her. Tenten picked up her kunai, performing the seals to seal them back in the scrolls, the line of her back tense.

"Yes?"

Tenten turned to him, her brown eyes narrowed.

"I think I feel the jinchuuriki's chakra."

Neji closed his eyes, focusing as he expanded his awareness outward, down the winding path that led to the black sand harbor, to where the bones of shinobi lay scattered across the windswept grass.

_'There.'_ Four chakra signatures were heading up the path towards them at a brisk pace. His brow furrowed as he focused further: one was Uzumaki's, bright blue, tinted with blood-red, another Gaara's, a gold as luminescent as the heart of a forge, but two were different. One was the black of the night sky, the other the dark green of moss on a tree. All bore the unmistakable sense of wrongness, of difference, that marked a jinchuuriki.

"I do as well," he said as he opened his eyes, turning to watch Gai and Lee bound off the spikes and land in synchronized crouches by them, straightening and brushing their jumpsuits off.

"Right!" Gai bellowed, "Are we ready to capture Uzumaki and bring him back to our village? The fight will be tough, but I believe that we-"

Gai, who was never silent, trailed off, his gaze drifting from them to the jinchuuriki who were coming up the hill. Neji turned, activating the Byakugan, signaling Tenten, who unrolled a scroll and summoned a kusarigama, hefting the scythe in one hand and unrolling the chain and weight wrapped around the shaft with the other. Lee began doing squats to calm his nervousness, while Gai put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing once, before walking out to stand in front of them, crossing his arms across his chest.

Naruto was skinnier, probably due to the pack burdening him, Neji noted with clinical detachment. His face had lost its childish pudginess, his hair dirty and brown with grime. There was a sling around his neck: Neji could see a female baby inside it, asleep, a black seal surrounding her left eye. He was dressed in the black clothing of an ANBU, but had no mask or sword, his expression blank, showing no remorse for his betrayal.

The Sand jinchuuriki was still the same, his eyes the pale green of rusted copper, his hair dark red, but for the missing gourd on his back. He, too, was dressed in black, the dark tone of the clothes highlighting the sickly quality of his skin.

The woman- Yugito Nii- was short and skinny, her long blonde hair bound back and her mouth twisted in a smirk. She was dressed in the same clothing, a sword resting on her back, a seal encircling her neck.

"Uzumaki," Gai said, "the new Hokage has detailed us to bring you back. Are you going to cooperate, or will we need to fight you?"

"I'm not coming back," Naruto said, "so you can all go home and save yourself the trouble." Gai grunted in aggravation.

"Very well, then. I'm sorry that we have to do this." Neji slid into the Gentle Fist stance, Lee moving into his own combat stance.

Nii moved in front of the other jinchuuriki. Her pale eyes fixed on Gai as she slid the straps of her pack free, letting it fall to the earth for Naruto to pick up. Neji blinked, focusing in on the seal around her neck, watching the black chakra inside it leak free, perforating the esophagus, scarring the vocal chords.

"Uzumaki," she said in a voice roughened with pain, blood dying her teeth pink, "stay back." Her lips twitched into a cruel sneer. "I haven't had a good fight in a while."

There was a cold wind blowing.

* * *

Naruto glanced at Yugito, then at the Konoha-nin, their faces deadly serious, Tenten's hands clenched on her weapon. The tension was palpable. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, the back of his neck prickling. 

"You sure? They're tough."

Yugito glanced at him over her shoulder, baring her teeth in a frenzied smile.

"Perfectly sure. They are nothing."

Lee jerked forward at that, making an abortive cry of protest. Yugito looked the Konoha-nin over one last time, head tilted, before snorting.

"Pathetic."

"This isn't your fight," Gai said, taking a step forward, stretching out a hand. "Step aside, and let us deal with our own problem."

Yugito stood still, perfectly relaxed, perfectly calm, watching Gai's hand move closer and closer, until it was almost within a foot of her.

She struck.

A wave of killing intent flooded the battlefield, as heavy as the ocean, and the battle exploded into motion.

Yugito's hand was clenched around Gai's throat, electricity crackling on her skin, humming, high and wild, and Gai was shaking, his eyes rolled back in his head, hands scrabbling at Yugito's grip. The weighted chain zipped by Yugito, thudded into a stump, wood chips showering down over them in a blatant display of power.

Neji closed in three steps, his proximity forcing Yugito to let go of Gai, who fell to the ground, foam on his lips. The Hyuuga's hands moved- Naruto yelled a warning, too late- darting out, impacting Yugito's shoulder with a soft 'whoomp' of chakra. Yugito blinked, surprised, and her surprise was her undoing.

Lee's foot came down on her head, her head snapping downward in a crackle of bones and tendon stretching. Naruto took a breath, poised to enter the battle, but paused.

Yugito lifted her head, blood leaking in a thin, steady stream out the side of her mouth, her eyes black with the Nekomata's fury. She grinned, exposing teeth grown into fangs, saying in a voice tattered by the Nekomata's chakra,

"You should not have done that," and reached out as Neji closed again, his hand landing on her belly, to grab Neji's wrist and jerk him close to her, a parody of an embrace. Lee rushed her, attempting to save his teammate, but he was too late. Her other hand flew through seals, one after another: dog, horse, ram, rooster.

A sphere of electricity exploded out from her, blue-white and shrieking, lightning bolts twining over the surface, flickering out to scorch the earth black. Neji's spine bent in a painful curve, his hair pushing outward as his body was flooded with the power of lightning itself, red, raised lines spidering out over his pale skin as the electricity crawled over him.

His Byakugan could not help him here, with an opponent who didn't even try to hide.

Lee twisted out of the way just in time, pushing off the ground to flip in the air and land by Tenten, who sent out the chain again, this time letting the weight head straight for Yugito, who leaned away just enough for the weight to pass her by, pushing Neji into it.

The weight slammed into Neji's side, a sickening noise, like dry twigs snapping, filling the air. Naruto winced, feeling bile rise in his throat at the soft sound Neji made, the way he crumpled to the ground, face pale with agony, the Byakugan fading from his eyes.

"Neji!" Gai screamed, voice hoarse with anguish as he tried to run to his fallen student's side. Yugito stepped into his path, black chakra flickering on her skin, burning the bandages wrapping her wrists to ashes. Gai halted, gritting his teeth.

"You'll pay for that," he said. Yugito looked at him with her alien eyes, and Naruto wondered what she saw: an insect, a clod of dirt, a pestilence upon the earth to be wiped out?

Yugito was laughing, low and terrible, the cracked noise rising, higher and higher, into a shriek of joy, as she rushed Gai, who met her, the two of them trading blows almost faster than the eye could track, but just slow enough that Naruto could marvel at Yugito's feline agility, the way she twisted just enough for Gai's blows, any one of which could kill her, to pass harmlessly by.

Lee was biting his lip, vibrating with the urge to join the fight, but forced to pause by the knowledge that the two jounin in the air were at so high a level that he would only hinder Gai.

"Lee," Gai yelled over Yugito's crazed laughter, "Take off the weights, open the gate!" Lee nodded frantically, struggling to remove his shoes and leg warmers, unwrapping the weights, letting them fall to the earth with a loud bang, the stone of the road cracking into craters under the impact. Lee performed a seal, opening the Initial Gate, and leaped into the fight.

Yugito turned her head just enough to see Lee, her laughter ceasing. She did a handspring, landing farther down the road, forcing Lee and Gai to chase her.

Tenten attacked while she was distracted, the chain winding around Yugito's leg and pulling her off-balance. Yugito snarled, performing more seals. Strands of electricity flowed from her fingers to the kunai she had in her pockets, and she jerked the kunai free, sending them rocketing at Tenten.

Tenten dodged, hauling on the chain again, sending Yugito to one knee. Another seal, and a ball of lightning coalesced by Yugito's shoulder, floating away, too slow and small to be of any significance, drifting below the edge of the mesa, out of sight. Yugito rolled out of the way of Lee and Gai's attacks, all of her attention now focused on putting Tenten out of commission.

The kunai zipped in and out like needles through cloth, twisting around each other, harrying Tenten in a seemingly random pattern.

"What is she doing?" Naruto muttered, watching Yugito twist out of the way of another attack, almost too slow this time, the edge of Lee's sandal taking a layer of skin off her cheek.

"She's herding her," Gaara said, watching Tenten back further and further away, trying to get away from the electrified strands that burned her skin with every contact she made. Tenten blinked as her heel scraped the edge of the mesa, glancing over her shoulder, eyes wide with terror.

Gai finally landed a hit on Yugito's lower arm, with only the armor plating sewn into her shirt saving her from a compound fracture or worse.

But even Gai's strike didn't distract Yugito from her plan. The ball of lightning, forgotten by all of the Konoha-nin, suddenly appeared behind Tenten, floating up from below the edge. It hit her in the back and was absorbed, sending her stumbling forward, arms windmilling wildly. Her body was flooded with electricity and then she was unconscious.

Tenten fell to the rock, a foot from the edge of the mesa, the kusarigama falling from her limp fingers. Yugito kicked impatiently, the chain wrapped around her ankle yanking the scythe to her. Lee punched her and her head snapped to the side, hair flying.

She coughed, shook her head, and forced herself to her feet, shaking her ankle free of the chain. Her smile was cold and focused, the Nekomata's fury submerged beneath strategic planning, the recognition that this battle was not one she could afford to just plow her way through; not without debilitating injuries, at any rate.

Her fingers clenched into fists, the electric strands connecting her to the kunai disappearing, the kunai dropping to the ground. She reached up to her katana and unsheathed it in a hiss of air, the gray sunlight washing down the blade.

Gai and Lee attacked again, two blurs of green, and she met them, dodging their attacks. Her blade swept through the air, the tip slashing a long score across Lee's chest and skin and cloth parted like flower petals, blood welling in the cut.

She rolled, thrust the blade behind her through the space between her arm and side, blade sinking into Gai's thigh with a wet noise. Gai grunted, leaped back, performed another seal, this one opening the Healing Gate.

The torn cells regenerated, the flow of blood staunching, the deep cut sealing together. Gai smiled, his movements free and easy, having gotten his second wind.

Yugito was flagging, the ten minutes of combat having taken its toll, her movements, while not yet sluggish, were becoming less graceful, her breathing taking on a worrying rasping quality.

Lee attacked again, fists flying, and Yugito managed to just roll out of the way, sheathing her blade as she sprang upright, beginning to spin, becoming a blur of black and yellow, a move that eerily resembled Neji's Heavenly Spin, black chakra leaking out to form a shield.

Lightning flew down from the sky, bolt after bolt after bolt, gathering together in a larger and larger orb in front of her. Lee and Gai paused, sharing a look of trepidation, unsure what was coming. More lightning collected, blue-white and elemental, the electricity making Naruto's hair stand on end, the cold wind blowing harder, full of the sharp smell of ozone, sweat rolling down his back.

The tension in the air grew tighter and tighter, until Naruto felt like screaming with it. The orb of lightning shifted and morphed, changing into the likeness of a dragon's head. The lightning ceased.

The dragon opened its mouth.

A light, brighter than the sun, shone, the air itself shrieking as the dragon exhaled, and lightning scythed down from the sky, covering the earth, imprisoning Lee and Gai in its painful embrace, white fury skittering over their skin, leaving webs of burnt flesh in its wake. Destruction embodied, the lightning tore the stone of the ground to shreds, leaving the fissures red-hot and smoking; it boiled the air into ozone, musty and foul. It was beautiful.

They were screaming.

The lightning dissipated, and Lee and Gai crumpled onto the ground like puppets without strings, their green outfits burnt to their skin. Yugito fell to one knee, her breath rattling in her chest, hands clenching as she pushed herself upright, staggering over to Gai, raising one hand to unsheathe her sword, the blade poised to stab downward.

Naruto, paralyzed, finally moved.

"_No!_ Don't kill them, Yugito!" He sprinted across the melting rock to her, grabbing her by the elbow. Her gaze shifted to him, the pale blue of her eyes swallowed up by the Nekomata's darkness. She swallowed, and spoke in the voice of the child she had once been.

"But I want to."

"No," Gaara said, reaching for the katana, gentle fingers uncurling her hand from around its hilt, taking the sword from her. "No, you don't."

Yugito blinked, the darkness receding from her eyes, and stumbled, flinging out a hand to keep from falling. The guardsmen of Kiri appeared, moving to the Konoha-nin's sides and checking their pulses.

"We will send them home," one of them said, his voice heavy with disgust. "They have failed."

Uncaring, Naruto slung an arm around Yugito's waist, shifting Moriko's sling out of the way. With Gaara on the other side, the four of them forming a sad and makeshift family, they helped Yugito limp inside the gates of Kiri.

* * *

**A/N: **If you have any criticism or comments, please review! 


	9. Chapter 9

_People talkin' about us  
They got nothin' else to do  
When it all comes down we will  
Still come through  
In the long run_  
- 'The Long Run' by the Eagles

* * *

Naruto and Gaara helped Yugito limp to a spot out of the road, where Yugito collapsed onto a crate, blinking unfocused eyes. Gaara reached out and grasped her chin, turning her face to him, leaning close to peer into her eyes. Yugito submitted passively to his examination, still too out of it to protest. 

"Concussion," Gaara said, reaching over her to slide her sword back into the sheath. Naruto winced, setting Yugito's pack down. _'Damn it. And us without the money to pay for a doctor or even a room.'_

"Okay, so what do we do, and how do you know all this stuff?" he asked. Gaara shrugged, looking around at the buildings around them. Kiri's buildings were bizarre, a hodgepodge of driftwood and stone, all stretching up as high as they could go and taking up as little ground space as possible, due to the limitations of the mesa.

"We have to prevent her from falling asleep for twenty-four hours, but other than that, nothing. As for my knowledge-" he grimaced, "there is little more to do in the middle of the night than read, when you grow tired of staring at the moon." Naruto looked up at the overcast skies, blinking as drizzle spattered on his face, before pulling a piece of Moriko's blanket over her face to protect her. The air was cold, and he worried that she would freeze, as tiny and skinny as she was.

"What happened?" Yugito said, glancing at him, her eyes narrowing as she took in their surroundings. Naruto watched her catalogue every entrance and exit with awe and no little bit of sadness, wondering if he was doomed to become that paranoid now that he was always on the run, always searching for a place to go to ground.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Gaara asked. Yugito blinked, answering,

"I had just knocked out the girl, but-" she glanced around, lips curling in a smug smile, "I assume I defeated the two green monstrosities, considering that we are inside the walls."

"Uh, yeah, you did," Naruto said, holding Moriko closer as he felt her shiver. "And I would really like it if we could get out of the rain." Yugito arched a brow as she stood, scooping up her pack and settling it on her shoulders, ignoring the rapidly healing patch of raw flesh on her cheek, wincing as her arm protested when she tied her scarf over the seal on her throat.

"There's no 'getting out of the rain' in Kiri. It rains eighty-five percent of the time here. All of their vegetable produce is grown in greenhouses, due to the rampant precipitation."

Naruto sighed, following her out into the street. "Joy."

The people of Kiri were ragged and scarred, their faces all roughened from the sea, most of the men wearing little more than patchwork shorts, the women's only concession to their gender being a band of cloth around the chest. All had short hair; all carried fishing spears or swords. Most were wet with seawater, fresh from swimming. Even the kids were fierce-looking.

"And you defeated this village in combat?" Gaara asked as they followed Yugito down another street. "They are very warlike in appearance; how did that occur?"

Yugito stopped at an intersection, looking around, confused. "There used to be a hostel here remaining from the occupation that Kumo shinobi could use. I guess they tore it down when the occupation ended." She turned on her heel and set off down another narrow street, calling back,

"We had more resources, more shinobi to pour into the furnace, more soldiers to waste. We could have kept the war up for ten, for twenty years." She paused, looking around at the patched buildings, the signs swinging in the wind howling off the ocean, the people who passed them by, dark eyes wary, scarred hands tightening on the hafts of their spears, with something resembling respect.

"Kiri never ran out of courage. But in the end… they ran out of time."

* * *

Gaara sat down on a bench, watching Naruto flop down on another one and extricate a bottle filled with unappetizing fake milk for Moriko. Yugito continued to wander around the small park, swearing to herself under her breath and squinting miserably at the gloomy sky. 

Moriko grabbed the bottle with tiny hands and brought it to her mouth, sucking fiercely. Naruto watched her drink with weary affection, blue eyes bruised with sorrow for her. He heard Yugito curse particularly loud, and turned in time to see her kick a rock, the small stone flying and nearly taking the head off a seagull.

"Problem?" he asked mildly, moving aside on the damp bench so she could sit down. She did, raking her hands through her hair, muttering inaudibly, before calming.

"Many. I think I might have a crack in my radius." She was cradling her left arm close to her, and even Gaara, who had never been truly injured, could see the way her arm was swollen inside the armored cloth. "We are out of funds; none of us know any healing jutsu, so if someone gets injured beyond the demons' ability to heal, we are in grave danger; there is nowhere on the island to stay; the girl-" she sighed as Naruto took the empty bottle away from Moriko, all-too-aware of what was going to happen now. Gaara plugged his ears with sand.

Moriko began to scream, her face screwing up and turning purplish-red, thin limbs batting at the air as she howled for more, more food, more milk, more everything. Naruto rocked her, trying his best to soothe her, his face pinched, a little bit older, a little bit colder.

Gaara, watching, found this to be one of the saddest sights he had ever seen: a jinchuuriki, bereft of mother or father, a child only twelve years old, doing his best to care for a squalling infant because he knew- this, they all knew, even Yugito- that whatever fumbling care he could provide would be better than the darkness of the shed.

But they were limited, and could only do so much, and Moriko, who lacked any ability to see beyond her own desires, could not understand that. All she understood was that she had food, when she had been denied it so long, and her hunger was unable to be appeased.

Gaara turned away, looking at the tiny circular park around them, cultivated carefully with the native, sharp grasses, the tiny white flowers that bloomed on the creeping vines around their feet. Yugito was hunched over her arm, eyes closed as she hummed something from Kumo in an attempt to block out Moriko's wails.

By some lucky twist of fate, the park was hidden from the surrounding buildings by the thick mist, and no one came to see what was making such an appalling noise. Naruto continued to rock her, and finally she calmed, her face untwisting, her dark eyes falling shut, exhausted by her tantrum.

"Is she quite finished?" Yugito asked acerbically. "Because if she is, we need to find the jinchuuriki and get out of here as soon as we can." She glanced around at the tall buildings looming out of the mists, fingers drumming on her thighs in a nervous twitch. "The shinobi of Kiri haven't recognized me yet- most of the ones who would died in the war- but when they realize that a Kumo shinobi is in their midst, we'll need to run."

"Okay, so let's split up," Naruto said, shoving the empty bottle in his pack and wrapping Moriko back up in her sling and handing her to Yugito, who took her with barely-concealed distaste. "I'll take the Academy, Gaara can take the training grounds to see if anybody there's the jinchuuriki. What do you want to do, Yugito?"

She shrugged. "I'll wander, see if I can find us a defensible place to stay."

The drizzle was never-ending, drumming on his skin and weighing his sand down with water, the soft pattering of rain on stone so ceaseless that he thought he might go mad with it. He wished he had a book, any book, even the old book of fables that he had outgrown by the time he was seven, just to distract himself from the eerie sensation of water soaking into his sand. The beginning of his favorite fable seemed ironically apt here.

'_But here, a rain falls never-ending, and I am far from home.'_

* * *

The Academy had been empty, the dark stone building nothing like Konoha's bright classrooms. There had been weapons, stained with something that looked eerily like blood, leaning in all the corners, waiting for their owners- and that was just sick, that kids who weren't even genin yet had weapons already christened with blood- to return and take them up again. 

So Naruto had followed the tramp-tramp of footsteps outside Kiri's walls, shadowing the orderly lines of classes as they marched down the path to the beach. The students, who should have been laughing, playing, arguing, followed their teacher in dulled silence, their faces all wiped clean of any expression. It was horribly creepy.

Their teacher gazed over them with a stern face, hands tightening on his spear in mute threat. Naruto kept far behind them, suppressing his chakra to as low as he could go, and finally they reached the small cove, the black sand stretching out in a gentle curve, the dark, frigid water, stirred by the wind, crashing against the rocks and the sand relentlessly. The teacher barked an order, and the entire class toed off their shoes and ran for the ocean, diving in and cutting through the water like knives. He hid behind an outcropping of stone covered in the gray grass that covered the island, parting the grass with his hands to peer out at the spectacle.

"There is a rock somewhere on the bottom of the cove with a note tied onto it," the teacher yelled over the raging wind, "and whoever finds that rock is exempt from taijutsu practice for today." His scarred mouth stretched in a cruel smile. "Of course, all the other rocks are tagged with explosive tags."

Naruto frowned when the students didn't even complain, their eyes fixed on their teacher as they bobbed in the water, waiting for his command. He barked an order, and the dark heads disappeared beneath the waves without a sound.

They stayed down, and stayed down, and stayed down, long past the time he would have been rocketing to the surface, lungs burning and protesting the lack of air. The wind bit into every bit of exposed flesh, throwing stinging sand grains at him, as cold as winter. _'It must be horrible for them, if it's so crappy for me and I'm still dry!'_

One head appeared, and then another, all dark-haired and close-cropped, indistinguishable. More and more popped up, holding rocks, turning over the tags. Most threw theirs away, the rocks 'thunking' into the water and sinking without a sound. The sensei looked inexplicably disappointed.

And then it happened.

An explosive tag detonated, sending a plume of blood-tinged water shooting straight up, a thin, high wail of pain cutting through the roaring of the wind and the waves as surely as Kyuubi's claws. Naruto blinked, focused in, swallowing down his nausea as the grisly spectacle came into view.

A boy- he had taken too long to read his tag- was howling, holding his hand up in front of him, three of his chubby fingers gone, skin and bone torn apart in the explosion, blood streaming over his hand, mixing with the water.

And the other kids- they weren't surprised, or scared, or even offering help.

They were-

His eyes widened as he finally heard them.

They were _laughing_.

They were _amused_ by the boy's agony, by the way he flopped back and forth in the water like a drowning cow.

"Honda!" The teacher shouted, "Get out of the water and go get that bandaged." The boy- Honda- stumbled out of the water, whimpering, holding his maimed hand in front of him, the water-wrinkled skin dyed pink with sluggishly pumping blood, and staggered back towards Kiri, a trail of blood marking his path.

Their source of amusement gone, the students dove back under the surface, as at home in the water as they were on land. Naruto swallowed down the bile in his throat, wishing that he couldn't smell the metallic stench of the boy's blood, couldn't see the brown stains trailing up the path to Kiri.

A long hour passed, but no one found the rock with the note. Luckily, no one else got their fingers blow off, either, so Naruto considered it a success, even when he had to follow the dripping class back up the path into Kiri.

After splitting off, he found Gaara hidden in the shadow of the walls at the training grounds, the other jinchuuriki glaring at the shinobi practicing their jutsu as if they had personally insulted him.

"No luck for you, either?" Naruto commiserated. Gaara's lip curled with aggravation, but he finally shook his head.

"None. And it wasn't even interesting to watch. The lack of any bloodline abilities just means that they all spend their time doing the same jutsu over and over again. It was mind-numbingly dull."

"Well, I saw a kid get his fingers blown off," Naruto said with feigned excitement, relating the story as the two of them left the training grounds, taking a shortcut through a fish market, the air loud with the sounds of fishermen hawking their wares, the fish glaring out at them with round eyes, so fresh that they could have been alive but for the long cut down their bellies.

"Kiri is known for its brutal training methods," Gaara said as they rounded a corner, "It is not for nothing that they call it the Village Hidden in the Bloody Mist."

"Yeah, I guess. I'm just glad I didn't grow up here!"

Gaara 'hmmed' in response, and then glanced to the side. "There's Yugito."

Yugito strolled up to them, Moriko in the sling around her neck.

"Here." She undid the sling and handed Moriko over to Gaara with poorly disguised relief, before jerking her head at the street further down. "I think I may have found the jinchuuriki. He's getting pushed around by some older students, and I think it's going to escalate into actual violence soon."

She glanced at Moriko, biting her bottom lip, and then said quietly, "I'm worried about her. She doesn't react to pain: she stuck her hand out and injured her palm on a thorn, and she didn't even let go until I did it for her."

Naruto looked over at Moriko, meeting her calm green eyes. _'Is this some other effect of the shed?'_ At the rate she was showing new problems, it seemed like she was never going to be normal, never going to be the girl she could have grown up to be, no matter how hard he or anyone else tried to fix her.

But he wouldn't believe that she couldn't be fixed. She was his charge, his responsibility, and he would fix her, he would make her better, because she- more than anyone- deserved it.

"They're over here," Yugito said, ushering them through the crowded market, filled with people browsing the stalls, haggling in loud voices, their sentences sprinkled liberally with words that even _he_ wouldn't use on a daily basis, which was saying a lot.

There was the sound of a brawl further up, and Naruto broke into a trot, squinting until the fighters came into view.

Three genin, their hitai-ates wrapped around their upper arms, were standing around a barrel filled with rainwater, holding the head of a younger boy under the surface, kicking him as he remained totally relaxed, seemingly unconscious.

"Hey!" Naruto yelled, startling them. They looked up, startled, just in time for him to plow into the first, driving a pointy elbow into his side and hitting him with an uppercut to the jaw, the boy's head snapping back as he stumbled, falling onto his back.

"Shinji!" One of the other two cried, both of them leaving the jinchuuriki to pull their friend to his feet. The ringleader wobbled between them, glaring at Naruto.

"Who the hell are you, brat?"

Naruto took another step forward, summoning a clone. The boys' faces blanched.

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and you'd better get out of here before I get _really_ mad."

"I would recommend the same course of action," Yugito added helpfully, voice seething with an undercurrent of menace.

"Okay," Shinji said, holding up his hands as the three of them backed away, turning and running. Naruto turned and hauled the jinchuuriki out of the rainwater barrel, shaking him.

"Hey, you okay?"

The boy blinked, a transparent membrane sliding across his hazel eyes like some sort of third eyelid. Naruto grinned, impressed. The boy's eyes narrowed as he scowled, glancing about for something, before finding a slate and piece of chalk nearby, picking up the chalk and scribbling in cramped kanji,

_Who the hell are you?_

"Uh…" Naruto said, staring at the slate. "Are you mute or something?" The boy rolled his eyes and made an irritated noise low in his throat, running his hands through his brown hair and opening his mouth.

'_Holy shit.'_

Several rows of sharp, triangular teeth marched back into his mouth, resembling the mouth of a shark, his gums and tongue all bearing long cuts. The serrated teeth were dyed pink with blood. _'The teeth must cut the inside of his mouth every time he closes it,'_ Naruto realized, fighting down a grimace at the idea of having the taste of blood constantly in his mouth.

"Oh." The boy shook his slate at them and underlined his previous question for emphasis.

"Oh! We're jinchuuriki. I'm Naruto Uzumaki, he's Gaara, the baby's Moriko, and that's Yugito Nii. Who're you?" The boy turned the slate around and scrawled his name,

_Katashi Ikeda._

"Nice to meet you, Katashi. Can we-" he glanced around at their surroundings, grinning nervously as the residents of Kiri stared back at them, their eyes dark with anger at the jinchuuriki's presence, "-go to your apartment or something?" The crowds started to move closer, and Katashi grabbed Naruto's hand, jerking his thumb at an alleyway and dragging him down the narrow street, Gaara and Yugito following.

The sounds of their feet slapping the pavement and their ragged breathing became the only things he heard as the five of them sprinted away from the crowd, the silent mass of people slowing as the five of them left the center of town, heading into a decrepit, tiny, smelly alley, graffiti smeared over the walls.

Katashi fished a ring of keys out of his pocket and unlocked a white door, pulling it open with a groan of rusty hinges. Naruto went inside, the low doorway forcing Yugito to duck as she came in.

The apartment had three tiny rooms, one door- to a bedroom or something- closed and locked with a padlock. The room they were in resembled something cut out of one of Sakura's decorating magazines: the couch was covered in girly floral fabric, the white carpet spotless, and doilies and lace and bowls of dead smelly flowers covered every surface. Even the lamp looked too ornate and delicate to actually work.

Katashi went to the kitchen, pulling three delicate teacups out of the cabinet and starting to make tea. The jinchuuriki took off their shoes, Yugito standing by the door like a silent sentinel, visibly uncomfortable at the feminine nature of the apartment.

"It is definitely an…" Gaara paused, searching for a word as he gazed about, rocking Moriko, who was deeply asleep, absently in his arms, "_interesting_ decorating scheme."

"Yeah," Naruto replied, crossing the room to stare at a framed photograph on the wall.

The woman in the picture was middle-aged, her freckled, weather-beaten face crinkled in a smile, her silver hair chopped short. A Kiri hitai-ate was looped around her neck, and a huge sword, the blade longer than her, was strapped across her back, almost blocking out the sight of the sea and sunset behind her.

Katashi came back out of the kitchen, handing cups of tea to them and grabbing his slate and chalk as they sat down on the couch and chairs surrounding the coffee table.

"Hey, Katashi, who's that?" he asked, pointing at the picture. Katashi looked at the picture, his face twisting in sharp grief.

_My… my grandmother, I guess, when she was younger. She took care of me, even if she wasn't really my grandmother._ He tilted his chin up, pride evident in every line of his body as he wrote, _She was one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist._

"Really?"

_Yes. Her name was Rei Higurashi._

Yugito set her cup of tea down, leaning forward as she said sternly,

"It was incredibly stupid of you to invite us into your home without verifying our identities. We could have killed you just now." Katashi frowned, scribbling,

_I didn't need to. I know you're jinchuuriki, 'cause the shark is freaking out._

"The shark?" Gaara asked. Katashi nodded.

_Yeah. The Isonade, the shark with three tails. He attacked the village nine years ago, and killed all the babies and pregnant women. I was four months from when I was going to be born, but they cut me out of my mother and sealed the shark in me. I should have died,_ he shrugged, _but the shark kept me alive._

"This is good tea!" Naruto said enthusiastically, stealing Yugito's untouched cup from her and drinking it. Yugito scowled at him, her eyes flickering black.

"So, can you speak at all?" Gaara asked, leaning forward, interested. Katashi turned his head and spat blood into a spittoon by the couch before scribbling,

_Yeah, but most people can't understand me. Only Rei could._ He made a garbled noise, the sounds distorted by the seven rows of teeth in his mouth, but Naruto, listening, could tell that it was a sentence. He figured he could learn to understand Katashi without too much trouble.

_See?_

"Hm," Gaara said, seeming pleased, as if some terribly important question had just been answered.

"What was the deal with those kids?" Naruto asked, setting the tiny china teacup down on the wobbly table.

_They bully me because I've got the shark in me,_ Katashi wrote bluntly. _And I can't fight back, because then they go to the Mizukage, and he cuts off my money. I guess they don't like me because I can swim the fastest out of all the genin and can see underwater._

"Nothing is so cruel as a child," Yugito said with aching familiarity from her perch on the other side of the table. Katashi raised a brow in her direction.

_Uh… huh._ He grinned smugly, _And I can breathe underwater, too, so they really don't like me._ He picked up the teacups and went into the kitchen, washing them and putting them in the ancient dishwasher before going into his bedroom. Naruto, craning his neck, could see various sorts of joke products like smoke bombs and fake money strewn about, mounds of clothes piled high on the bed.

Katashi came back, snagging his slate.

_Why're you guys here?_

Naruto glanced at Gaara. "It sounds really stupid when I explain it-"

"Yes," Yugito chimed in.

"-so you do it this time."

Gaara launched into the explanation, and somehow managed to condense the entire sordid story into one long sentence. Katashi listened to it, brow furrowed, fingers drumming against his slate as Gaara finished.

_So you want me to go with you?_

"Yep!" Naruto said. _'This is in the bag. Five jinchuuriki, here we come.'_

_Yes._ But- Katashi's hand faltered on the slate, the membranes of his third eyelids flickering over his eyes in some sort of sadness, - _can I have time to see Rei, before I go?_

"No," Yugito said, just as Naruto finished saying, "Sure."

Yugito glared at him, her jaw set.

"We don't have time. We need to get out of Kiri, as soon as possible."

_It'll only take five minutes,_ Katashi scribbled urgently, _and I'll be done really fast!_ Naruto stared at Yugito, willing her to concede, to give Katashi the time he needed to see his grandmother one last time.

Yugito gazed at Katashi grimly, and finally said,

"Fine. Ten minutes. Then we're off this island." Katashi stood, rushing to the door, unlocking it as he wrote with his free hand,

_That's all I need._

* * *

**Annotations**

"_They never ran out of courage. But in the end… they ran out of time."_ – A quote by Londo Mollari from Babylon 5.

_But here a rain falls never-ending, and I am far from home._ – Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series.

* * *

**A/N:** Review, please? Questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. 


	10. Chapter 10

_Grieving for you,_

_I'm not grieving for you._

_Nothing real love can't undo,_

_And though I may have lost my way,_

_All paths lead straight to you._

'Like You' by Evanescence

* * *

Yugito followed Katashi out of the alleyway, leaving Naruto and Gaara to pack the boy's clothes and buy rations with the money Katashi had stored away. The air was cold, but the citizens of Kiri, thronging around them, seemed to not feel it, even the children- she saw a girl, and in her face was the face of a man whose spine she had severed in the Kiri War- dressed in tattered shorts.

Katashi led her to a cemetery, and even she, who had become familiar with graveyards out of necessity, out of the need to keep sane, to push away the Nekomata's yowls, somehow found this cemetery to be…

Sad.

The cracked, crumbling gravestones leaned against each other in silent consolation, the only sound the whistling of the salt wind over the worn pathways. The gray moss of the island covered everything, but she didn't need to look at the blurred names, worn away by wind and tide, for she already knew their lives.

The mouthless dead were speaking, muttering, talking of children and life and the ways that they died, tape recorders of their last thoughts that would never wind down, would never be truly silenced, as long as the Nekomata walked the earth. She wondered where they had gone, and found it bitterly fitting that even she, jinchuuriki of the Nekomata, wandering the border between life and death, did not know what truly lay beyond life.

Katashi wandered the pathways, trailing webbed fingers over the crumbling stone, his bloodied lips moving in something resembling a prayer. Bile rose in her throat at this, the needless expenditure of energy, the blatant vulnerability. '_Save your prayers for the living,_' she thought, leaning back against the wall, watching his sad eyes glance over the worn curves, '_the dead have passed beyond all cares._'

The jinchuuriki of Isonade halted by a gravestone at the back, bowing his head, and she joined him, staring down at the paltry grave, the decaying stone with the name washed off by the rain, one of the tough ferns of the island growing beside it, carefully tended. Katashi ran a shaking hand over the top, as if he were touching the woman as she had been in life.

He took a shuddering breath, and scratched out, the letters ill-made, quivering with emotion,

_We argued the night before she died, and I told her I hated her, that I wished I'd never seen her in my life._ Yugito was silent, irritated by Katashi's sentimentality, and wondered if all the other jinchuuriki were going to be like this: so easily distracted from the mission by their past. She was lucky to have made a clean break when she was young, becoming able to sublimate all of her grief into action.

Apparently, this boy couldn't do the same. His hand shook as he continued, his breathing whistling through the gill slits behind his ears like wind through the trees,

_And she died thinking I hated her._ Yugito closed her eyes, hearing Rei Higurashi's voice, and knelt, letting her fingers splay out against the cold stone, feeling moss crumble underneath her fingers.

The voice strengthened, the voice of a dead woman, talking of her husband, long gone these forty years; of her child that the Isonade killed, and the mourning that followed; of the genocide she had committed against the clans, and the way she could no longer stand to look in the mirror; of how the Seven Swordsmen disbanded, the other six betraying the village, and how she stayed, only to become guilty by association; of how she laid down her sword, weary of blood and death.

And there, the memories of Katashi, of seeing his sodden form, huddled in the flickering light of a street lamp; of offering a hand and taking the boy, the human form of the Isonade, the three-tailed shark that killed her child, into her apartment, because she was selfish, and sick of loneliness; of sharing soup; of four years of pranks and laughter and joy and love.

She stood, dusting her hands off on her trousers, and said, her voice still raspy and soft from the Nekomata's chakra burning her throat,

"More than being a shinobi, more than her husband or her sword or her country, it was you, Katashi, that gave her life meaning. She loved you more than anything else in this world, and she knew you loved her, even as she died." Her lips twisted in a bitter, resentful smile.

"She never, not for one moment of your four years together, doubted that."

The slate dropped to the ground with a clatter, and Katashi fell to his knees before her, throwing skinny arms around her waist, his thin shoulders shuddering with sobs, the front of her shirt becoming damp with tears.

Yugito stared down at him, lip curling in a disgusted sneer. '_How pathetic_.' But then… Katashi was a jinchuuriki, and more than that, he was just a small boy in pain. And Uzumaki said that jinchuuriki had to stick together, had to comfort each other. So she controlled her instinctive urge to flinch away, to kill this boy sobbing into her belly, and knelt on the earth before him and let his tears soak her shoulder, her arms around his trembling back, because they were jinchuuriki, and that was what they did for each other.

She wondered if this- this sudden, deep connection, formed because you were the same, were the only ones who could truly understand what it meant to be '_other'_- was what it felt like to be a mother.

* * *

Naruto watched Katashi and Yugito throw their packs into the small sailboat, Gaara working on coiling the rope while Naruto walked up and down the dock, rocking Moriko back and forth, trying to calm her.

"Come on," Yugito called, stepping into the boat, helping Gaara into it.

"Ready to go, kid?" he asked Moriko. She stared up at him solemnly, muddy green eyes grave. "I guess that's a yes," he said, handing her to Gaara and getting into the boat as well. Katashi performed a quick jutsu, eyes narrowing in concentration.

Waves leaped up behind them, pushing the boat away from the dock and out of the harbor, curling and licking at the wooden sides of the boat.

"Awesome," Naruto said, watching the harbor recede behind them, swallowed up in the mist that surrounded the island. Katashi shrugged, scrawling,

_It's a jutsu they teach all the Academy students. We have to know how to sail, but if there's not enough wind, we do this._ He glanced up at the sky, searching out a star, and looked back at the water, black with the fading twilight. _We're on course. We'll land in the port of the Land of Fire._

He stood, grinning as he stripped his shirt off and threw it into the corner of the boat, his body launching in a smooth arc as he cut the water like a knife, disappearing beneath the choppy waves, webbed feet and hands propelling him down and out of sight.

"Naruto," Yugito said, "Have you been practicing the Raikyu?" He cracked his knuckles, nodding.

"Yeah. It's hard, though."

Yugito snorted, "Many things are going to be hard. Killing your first man will be hard. Your first child, even worse. But killing gets easier with practice; jutsus do, too."

"I know," he said, turning away to watch the last streaks of red in the west fade. An orb of lightning zipped by his face, making him jerk with a shout of surprise. He turned, frowning to Yugito, who was watching him, her lips twisted in a slight smile.

"Try to do that."

"Fine," he sighed, tired and irritated with her constant insistence. He bent his head, hands flickering through seals as he called chakra. A blue ball of chakra, no larger than a pea, formed between his hands, the soft humming of electricity lost in the pounding of the waves against the boat's hull.

"Is it stable?" Yugito asked. He looked up, blinking, seeing Yugito crouched in front of him, blue eyes fixed on the chakra, her hands cupping his.

"Yeah, I guess." Yugito bent closer, lower lip caught between her teeth.

"Good. Feed more in." He did as she asked, watching the tiny ball grow larger, the humming louder. Even Moriko, lying at his feet, appeared interested, one tiny arm reaching up for the orb of light. Sweat broke out on his brow, his throat dry as he swallowed, sparks flying off the orb, singing his hands, leaving black spots of soot and blisters rising in their wakes.

"Stop," Yugito said. He sighed, relieved, anticipating letting it go. "Now hold it," she finished.

"_What_?" he yelled. Her voice was flat, brooking no arguments, as she stood and went back to her seat, crossing her arms and watching him struggle to keep the orb under control, keeping it from fizzling out. "Hold it, just like that. I expect you to keep it going for at least ten minutes."

"You said you wanted to learn it," Gaara added from where he was huddled miserably in the bow, the sand crawling snake-like over his skin in agitation.

Naruto glared at him, then stared down at his hands, concentrating. Another blister formed on his palm, skin cells shriveling, dying, destroyed by the electricity dancing in his hands like the heart of a star.

He held his breath as lightning lashed out, snaked by his hair- the acrid stench of burning hair suffused the boat- but managed to keep it going, sweat rolling down his nose, down the back of his neck, cooling as the salt wind brushed over him.

A long minute passed, then another. The pain in his burned hands was becoming excruciating, like someone had added ground glass into the joints in his fingers. He winced, bit his lip, tasting blood as his teeth split the skin.

The Raikyu shuddered- '_Damn it, don't do this to me- don't you fucking blow out on me,_' – and flew apart into thousands of bright little sparks zipping through the darkness like hummingbirds as he lost control of the jutsu.

"Damn it," he muttered, punching the bench underneath him and doubling over as his hands throbbed, sharp, stabbing pains radiating up his arms with every movement.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" Yugito observed, legs crossed at the ankles, her hands playing with the kusarigama she took from Tenten, as a memento. They had been lucky, he knew, that none of the shinobi from Konoha had tried genjutsu, since Yugito couldn't fight genjutsu off at all, another drawback of the Nekomata. "It'll subside soon."

A fish came sailing over the edge of the boat and landed with a wet slap, water splashing over Moriko's face as she gurgled, giggling when the fish continued to slap its tail against the bottom of the boat.

Katashi hauled himself in, dragging more fishes with him, the third eyelid retracting, leaving his eyes glinting in the starlight. He tossed one at Yugito, who caught it with a muttered 'Thanks', gutting the fish with one sweep of her kusarigama.

_Dinner_, Katashi wrote, plopping down on the bottom of the boat and pulling his shirt on, covering the seal that stretched over his back, the black waves curling over his protruding shoulder blades.

"How'd you find them so fast?" Naruto asked, picking up one of the trout with fingers that tingled from the residual electricity on his skin.

_Something the shark can do,_ Katashi wrote with his free hand, the other one occupied with cleaning and descaling the fish he had in his lap. _Rei said it had something to do with sensing the electricity put off by living things or something; not quite sure what it's called._

"The Ampullae of Lorenzini," Gaara said from the bow, his eyes fixed on watching his sand absorb the blood on the bottom of the boat. "Pores in the skin that allow sharks to detect living things in the water, as well as orienting themselves to Earth's magnetic fields."

Katashi blinked. _Are you a walking encyclopedia or something?_

"No," Gaara said, taking the question completely literally. Katashi rolled his eyes, and bent to his task, the waves pushing the small boat onward, through the dark, stormy waters.

* * *

Tsunade stood in the doorway of the small ward in her surgery scrubs, watching the medic-nins hurry back and forth. The ward had only four beds, and had been built in the last war to house genin teams after studies had proven that teams healed faster when kept together.

As Gai's team was doing now.

The team had been lucky to be found so fast; the shinobi of Kiri had dropped them just inside the borders, in just the place for a routine border patrol to stumble upon them.

Lee and Gai were sedated, the green synthetic cloth of their suits melted to their skin. Two medics were with each of them, one cutting the dead skin away while the other followed them, regenerating the skin as best they could. There would be scars, large patches of skin deadened to touch, but that was a small price. They had gotten off lightly, she knew, being familiar with the technique Nii had used: one taught to the Hunter-nin of Kumogakure, traditionally used for incinerating the bodies of missing-nin.

Tenten was slouched in a chair, another medic grasping her chin and shining a light into her eyes. Her hands were shaking, Tsunade noted with a jaundiced eye, making a mental note to check for brain damage when the preliminary exams were finished. So much electricity was particularly dangerous to the brain, as it overwhelmed the natural electrical connections between synapses.

Neji was a whole other case, and almost as damaged as Lee and Gai. Electricity had flooded his brain, and the weight attached to the end of Tenten's kusarigama had shattered two of his ribs, the bone chips perforating his liver. He was still anesthetized, having just come out of surgery to remove the chips and stitch up his liver, but she expected him to wake up soon.

"Did you see any of Nii's weaknesses?" she asked, coming into the room and dropping her gloves into the trashcan. Tenten shook her head, wincing as the motion made her face turn green.

"None, Hokage-sama. She's very skilled at taijutsu- well," she laughed, bitter, "-she'd have to be to do that to Lee and Gai-sensei- and she had a huge amount of chakra. More than most jounin, but I suppose it comes from the demon." She looked at Neji, her face hardening. "We didn't try genjutsu. She had black fire on her skin, too."

Tenten sighed, smiling a little. "Well, if anyone tries to say that girls can't be good shinobi, I guess we just point them at her."

"What about the others?" Tsunade asked, pulling up a chair and placing her hands on Tenten's head, sending out feelers of chakra to search for damage within the skull. Tenten shrugged.

"Uzumaki was thinner than usual. The boy from Sand-" her eyes flickered in Lee's direction, "-looked the same. The baby looked fine, I guess. Nii looked fine, too. But-" She rubbed at her eyes as Tsunade removed her hands and sat back, "-they were all so thin, and short."

"No brain damage. You all got off lightly." She looked down at Tenten's last comment, reminded all over again that the shinobi they were chasing were not true shinobi; not true humans; nothing but shells for demons, abused and used by the villages they served.

"They probably all suffered from malnutrition as children," she said reluctantly. Tenten rested her arm on her knee, leaning forward.

"And Lee and Neji and Gai-sensei? What about them?"

Tsunade held out a hand, one of the medic-nins in the ward slapping a clipboard into it. She pulled it over, flicked through the papers, reading the assessments. Not as bad as she had feared, then.

"They'll be out in a week, but restricted from any strenuous activity for two months. So you'll be limited to C-rank missions, at most."

Tenten groaned. "God, Neji is going to be so pissed that he lost."

"I don't doubt that," Tsunade said, regretting the decision to send them after Uzumaki all over again. She needed to get out of the ward, out of seeing the price Gai's team had paid for her underestimation.

God, she needed a drink.

* * *

Summer was fast fading into autumn, the massive trees of Konoha beginning to show hints of their fall colors, and the late afternoon light was warm and golden on the road, the air chilly with the first bite of cold.

Gaara looked behind him at the others. They were two weeks into their trek through Fire Country, and were now only a half hour from Kerumigakure, the Village Hidden in the Smoke.

Yugito was walking beside Naruto, lecturing him on how to better control the Raikyu, spinning her kusarigama on the chain. Naruto's hands were cupped, electricity sparking on his fingers, but he was occupied with talking to Katashi. They had begun to understand Katashi's unorthodox speech after a week, and now they were able to converse with him the way they did with each other. Katashi was playing another prank, busy dropping pebbles into Naruto's pockets with one hand while bouncing Moriko up and down with the other.

Gaara snorted- if the boy knew what was good for him, he would refrain from trying the same trick on him- and dropped back to walk beside them.

"I smell smoke," he said, the sand leaping up and blocking the kusarigama's strike as Yugito sent it at him. The woman grunted in irritation, reversing the arc and slashing it at Katashi, who dropped and rolled underneath it, juggling Moriko, without missing a beat.

Naruto simply stepped out of its path, his blue eyes focused on the orb of lightning growing in his hands, the white-blue bolts crawling over his fingers, leaving red, raised welts in their wake.

Yugito jerked the kusarigama back to her, the shaft of the blade smacking into her palm. "You've all gotten better."

'_We would have to, with you attacking us with it at random moments in the name of 'practice' or 'making sure we keep alert,'' _Gaara thought, glaring at her out of the corner of his eye.

Katashi sniffled loudly, pressing a hand to his heart as he pretended to faint, "Oh, happy day, that you acknowledge my skills!" He squawked as Yugito grabbed the back of his shirt, the wickedly sharp edge of the kusarigama pressing into his throat as Yugito grinned at him, her smile full of teeth.

"Don't push it." She dropped him and continued, tossing over her shoulder, "You should check your back pocket, Naruto."

"Yeah, whatever," Naruto said, an indrawn breath of pain hissing through his teeth as he finally let the Raikyu dissolve into millions of white sparks dancing through the air, "I suppose the brat's poured more rocks into it."

"'m not a _brat_," Katashi sulked, the thin membrane of his third eyelid flickering back and forth over his eyes in agitation. Gaara rolled his eyes, attempting to repress his acidic reply. He failed.

"In the past two weeks, you have attempted to steal Yugito's sword and kusarigama seven times, filled Naruto's pockets with rocks three times, created water out of the earth for the sole purpose of saturating my sand with it two times, and pushed Naruto into the river just yesterday. In fact, the only person you have not tormented on this trip is Moriko, and that is because she would no doubt find whatever you did amusing. And you still insist that you are not a brat?"

"It's not my fault that you guys always fall for it," Katashi said, creating an orb of water in his hand and throwing it up in the air. "I couldn't ever get Rei, and I couldn't prank anybody else because I'd get beaten up if I left the house. I'm just making up for lost time."

Yugito stopped, making Naruto, who was shaking his hands in an attempt to stop the pain, bump into her and stumble back, falling onto his back.

"Hey, what's the deal?" he grumbled from his position on the road.

"Shut up," Yugito bit out, turning her head, eyes narrowed. She reached up, unsheathed her sword, and glanced at Katashi. "You know how to use a sword?"

"Yeah," Katashi said. "Rei was teaching me-" he stopped talking as she threw the sword at him, catching it in one hand and lowering himself into a combat stance. The afternoon light washed down the blade like liquid gold, water seeping out of the earth underneath Katashi's feet, lapping at his shoes.

Three clones formed around Naruto, all with Raikyu- nowhere near as big as Yugito's, but respectable in size- humming in their hands. A fourth took Moriko from Katashi and flickered away into the undergrowth on the side of the road, secreting her away.

A circle of sand was rotating at his feet, shifting restlessly, demanding combat. Yugito was holding the shaft of her kusarigama in one hand, spinning the weight with the other, her shoulders a line of tension.

Four chakra signatures were rushing towards them, the controlled flicker giving away what they were:

Hunter-nin.

They burst out of the treetops in a mass of black, white masks gleaming in the sunlight as they landed without a sound on the dusty road, the leader gazing at Naruto, his voice heavy with scorn.

"There's the traitor; hard to forget a face with _those_things."

One of them broke away, pulling out a scroll and biting his thumb. Gaara didn't move; the sand did it for him. It coiled around the Hunter-nin's ankle, yanking him down onto the road for the sand to devour.

Yugito was off, her kusarigama humming, high and clear, as it scythed through the air, the weight darting in and out as she attacked the leader, who dodged her strikes, backpedaling as he performed an Earth jutsu, the earth opening underneath her.

Gaara filled the gap with sand long enough for Yugito to step on it and launch into the air before concentrating on his own battle, the Hunter-nin he had targeted having escaped the sand's hold. He had thrown the scroll to the side, realizing his danger, and was closing, a kunai flashing into his hand.

The impact of metal on sand vibrated through him, and he allowed himself a smile, spikes of sand forcing themselves up from the earth, piercing the bottom of the Hunter-nin's foot, becoming swept away into the bloodstream.

The man leaped back, fingers coming up to his mouth in a circle. Fire, red-hot, billowed out from his mouth, hit the sand, and Gaara snarled as he felt his sand become heavy, leaden, solidifying into glass as the fire continued to move, destroying his weapon.

The glass shattered in a rain of crystal as he tried to move it, to use it against the Hunter-nin who was coming closer, scattering on the road, useless.

Shukaku was roaring in his head, but he ignored the tanuki's rage, scrambling backwards as the tip of a kunai sliced the air just in front of him, the sand layered on his skin protecting him from the strike, zipping by him to thud into a tree trunk behind him. The blank white mask of the Hunter-nin infuriated him, enraged him, because he couldn't see the face of the man he was going to kill, couldn't see the fear in his eyes.

A sand clone sprang up from the earth, wrapping itself around the Hunter-nin's leg, slowing him, making him stumble, the orb of fire burning in his hand extinguished as he lost concentration.

The noise of his blood thundering in his head overpowered everything else, a low growl rumbling in his throat as he sacrificed his sand armor, the grains on his skin leaving to coil around the other man's legs. The _nerve_ of this insect, daring to destroy his weapon, to boil it into useless shards of glass. He would suffer.

His hand curled into a fist.

There was a sound like paper tearing as the Hunter-nin's Achilles tendon separated from his heel and the man collapsed to the dusty road, blood spurting, swallowed up by the hungry sand. Gaara stalked closer, excited by the blood, by his pain. Shukaku rumbled a warning.

'_What_-'

Kunai flashed in the man's hands, rocketed at him.

There was no time to dodge, no sand to protect him.

One took him in the stomach, blood flowering out, crimson, dampening his shirt, and another hit him in the thigh, the metal grinding against bone. He jerked, his leg giving out underneath him as he crumpled to the road like wet tissue paper.

Synapses fired. Something- white-hot, like lightning in the brain- _pain_- tore him to shreds. It was _his_ blood flowing onto his hand, _his_ existence ending one minute at a time with every beat of his heart.

Someone was screaming, rough and maddened. He observed with detached interest that it was him screaming, his body writhing in the wagon wheel ruts, his bone gleaming white through the gaping wound of his leg.

He came back to himself, and felt the pain hammering against the inside of his skull, as if someone had taken an ice pick and was forcing it slowly into his brain.

He was in pain.

The Hunter-nin would pay.

He blinked unfocused eyes, saw the white mask of the Hunter-nin looming over him, the dark blade of a kunai upraised against the sky, ready to end his existence with one stroke.

That could not happen.

His fingers twitched, and the shards of glass lying on the road- grains of sand melted together into blades of crystal, but still _his_ sand- rocked back and forth, rose from the earth.

Everything seemed so clear, he noticed, when you were about to die.

The kunai began to descend, and the pain pulsing at the inside of his head grew worse as the kunai came closer, the blank mask of the shinobi large in his vision as the point rested on his belly, almost ready to tear through the skin, to lacerate his organs into so much meat.

The countless blades of glass came together, sheathing themselves in another's flesh with a sound like a knife tearing through cloth. Red liquid, as bright as the hues of the sun, began to flow over the whiteness of the mask as the Hunter-nin let go of the kunai, letting it clatter to the road in a small cloud of dust. The corpse fell forward onto Gaara, warm and wet with his own blood.

There was a shard of glass the size of his hand protruding from the back of his head, streaked with blood.

Gaara stared up at the fading afternoon light, and couldn't muster the strength to push the corpse off him. Everything was silent.

The earth beneath him thudded as he felt the others come close, and saw Naruto's blurred face hover in his vision, saw Katashi behind him, the side of his face rapidly swelling. Yugito stood behind them both, her face pale.

He felt very tired, and closed his eyes.

* * *

**A/N:** Review? 


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** I'm aware that people are impatient to get to the time-skip However, I can't finish up the gathering of the jinchuuriki in one chapter; that would break the pace of the story. I am going to try and have the gathering of the jinchuuriki done in eight chapters, so that we can get to the latter half of the story. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the new chapter.

* * *

_These walls built to stand come-what-may  
Lie shattered in the ashes  
His skin against this dirty floor  
Eyes fixed on the ceiling  
He has stretched those chains of sin  
Far beyond all feelings  
Still, so still..._  
- 'The Perfect Element' by Pain of Salvation

* * *

Naruto swallowed as Gaara's eyes drifted closed, and he knelt, grabbing the other boy by the shoulders and shaking him,

"Wake up, you bastard! Wake up, I'm not going to deal with a pissed-off drunken badger trying to kill me again!"

Katashi let an orb of water form in his hand and threw it at Gaara, smirking from a swelling face (the Hunter-nin had landed a kick on his cheekbone) when it splashed on Gaara. Gaara's eyelids flickered, lifted slowly, revealing a thin line of green. It was amazing that he could wake so quickly and stay awake, as if the ability to sleep had been permanently burned out of his brain, but Naruto supposed that it made sense when the consequences of sleeping were so… disastrous.

Sand rustled, fear making Naruto's throat as dry as the desert. It was amazing how long it had been since Naruto had felt it.

He had almost forgotten the taste of fears.

"The sand's staunched the bleeding," Yugito observed, "but we should move quickly." Her kusarigama was dripping blood, the red liquid joining the puddle beneath Gaara. She glanced disdainfully at the four bodies sprawled on the road, dust covering their black clothing and the Konoha hitai-ates gleaming in the sunlight before looking back at Gaara. "Can you walk?"

Naruto extended a hand, took Gaara's, tried to pull him upright. There was a harsh sound as Gaara tried to rise, making a low grunt of agony as he collapsed back to the road.

"I'd say that's a 'no'," Katashi said, handing Yugito back her sword. She sheathed it, jerked her head at the bushes, and knelt beside Gaara, looking up at Naruto while Katashi went to pick up Moriko.

"Can you carry him on your back?" she asked. "Katashi and I will distribute the contents of your backpack between us."

"Yeah," Naruto said, kneeling and presenting his back. Yugito helped Gaara to sit up and put his arms around Naruto's neck, then tied his ankles together to keep his legs around Naruto's belly before signaling him to stand.

He stood, tottered back and forth, and found his bearing, glancing back as a pained breath hissed through Gaara's teeth as he let his forehead rest on Naruto's shoulder. Katashi returned, holding Moriko in one hand and Naruto's pack in the other.

"You both look like complete idiots," he said helpfully.

"Yeah, thanks for that," Naruto muttered, looking back at the bodies sprawled on the road. He didn't feel sick, and somehow felt vaguely guilty for not feeling anything for them, for the four shinobi who were now dead because they were just doing their jobs.

"It'll hit later," Yugito said, removing most of the contents of his pack and putting it in her own. "We need to keep moving. We can reach it in a quarter of an hour if we hurry."

"We need to hurry," Naruto said. He could feel Gaara's blood, slick and warm, coating his fingers. Yugito nodded, coiled her kusarigama and hung it at her hip, and sprang forward, leading them at a brisk jog down the road.

They left the Hunter-nin where they fell.

* * *

They found Kerumigakure ten minutes later, passing through the gates with one of the gatekeepers following them, shouting something about needing a pass.

"We don't have time for that," Katashi snapped, folding his arms across his chest, glaring.

The gatekeeper blinked, expression bewildered. "Yeah, sure. Whatever you say." Katashi stared at him, then somehow… deflated, hunching back into himself at the reminder that he was unintelligible to everyone outside the jinchuuriki. Yugito stepped in front of him, shielding him from the gawking passerby who were fascinated by the glimpse of his teeth.

"We require urgent medical assistance. You will direct us to the nearest clinic," she said, her tone clipped and short, the voice of a commander in the field.

The gatekeeper glanced at Naruto, Gaara's blood staining the front of his shirt, and pointed down a nearby street. "Two blocks that way. You'll need to pay. You have…" he trailed off as they hurried away, leaving him standing at the gate with his mouth half-open.

"We've arrived?" Gaara slurred, half-open eyes glazed, his skin cold and clammy. '_Just our luck that he goes into shock when we need him most, considering we're in Konoha's territory,_' Naruto thought sourly, following Yugito into the whitewashed clinic and standing still as Katashi untied the rope holding Gaara on his back and helped him lay Gaara flat on a stretcher.

Yugito let her pack fall and went to the empty desk, slamming her fist onto the bell with a growl of irritation. Three harassed-looking shinobi hurried out from the back, dressed in white scrubs.

"Where is he injured?" the medic-nin asked, crouching over the stretcher and taking his pulse, her face the sort of one that brought to mind mothballs and too many cats.

"Leg and stomach," Naruto said, watching two other medics lift the stretcher and carry Gaara away to an examining room. He started to stand, but paused as Yugito held up a hand and followed the stretcher herself, leaving him to deal with the medic.

"And how was he injured?" the woman droned, checking off another question on her list.

"Uh- uh…"

"He fell into a river," Katashi said. The woman looked up from her clipboard and raised a brow, looking affronted by Katashi's slurred words.

"What did that young man say?"

"He fell into a river," Naruto repeated, giving a thumbs-up behind his back to Katashi.

"Very well, then. As for payment, you owe us one hundred for the initial examination, and more for whatever expenses we will incur for fixing him later. Do you have the first payment?"

'_God, whatever happened to the 'saving lives' part of being doctors?_' Naruto thought as he reached for Yugito's pack and pulled out a roll of bills, counting ten out. He felt bad giving away the money Rei had stored for Katashi- they had withdrawn it from the bank in Kiri before leaving- but he comforted himself that Rei would want them to use it to keep the journey going, to keep Katashi safe. The woman took them and went to the counter, leaving them kneeling on the tiled floor.

"We should probably go check on Gaara," Katashi said, wringing his hands and glancing over his shoulder at Moriko, who was thankfully asleep, the rocking motions of jogging having lulled her to sleep.

"Yeah, we should." Naruto pushed himself upright, hiding the money in the bottom of Yugito's pack and picking it up.

He followed Katashi down the narrow hallway, glancing around. The clinic was uncomfortably… sterile; the white walls gleamed, every room they passed empty. '_It'd be a good setting for a horror movie,_' he thought.

They found Gaara in a room at the end of the hall, his shirt cut up the middle, one of his pant legs being cut off with scissors. Yugito was standing at the end of the bed watching the medics work, her fingers stroking over the blade of her kusarigama in a silent, obvious threat.

"Here." Naruto tossed her the pack and moved to Gaara's side, leaning over to look into his face. Gaara's expression was serene and full of a sort of wonder, as if the pain he was feeling was so new and novel that it didn't even register as pain.

Or, he amended, catching sight of the other medic injecting Gaara with a syringe full of clear fluid, he could just be really, really doped up.

"Naruto," Yugito said, glancing at him, "you should go out and explore the town. Having all of us hover around his bed isn't going to make Gaara functional any sooner."

"You sure?"

"Yes," she said, looking away from him and at Katashi, who stood on Gaara's other side, his face pale with fear and his hazel eyes wide, the third eyelid flickering back and forth with stress. "Katashi, I'd like you and Moriko to stay here with me."

The idea of being forced to stay while Naruto went got his attention. "What? Why can't I go? I'm just as good as Naruto is- I even got one of those-" he shut up, glancing fearfully at the medics, who had just finished up.

"He's stable. We've cleaned and bandaged the wounds; he should wake within the hour, and be able to take short walks- no longer than five minutes- when he wakes. You've paid already?"

"Yeah," Naruto said. "The lady at the front desk got it." The medics nodded and backed out of the room, closing the door softly behind them. Katashi watched them go, spitting blood into a trashcan, and whirled, barking,

"And I killed one of those guys myself! I can handle it, so why can't I go?"

Yugito pinched the bridge of her nose, blowing out a long sigh of exhaustion. "Because, while we can understand you, the people out there can't, which makes the idea of you going out alone a huge liability. And not only that-" she looked him up and down, continuing in a pitiful attempt to sound gentle, "you are much more easily identified as a jinchuuriki than he is, due to the teeth."

Katashi's mouth opened and closed like a beached fish before he collapsed into a chair, mumbling, "Fine."

"Good." Yugito turned to Naruto. "Meet back here in an hour." He nodded, lifted a hand in a goodbye, and left the building.

The sun was setting, orange and low, and the streets of Kerumigakure were lit by the colorful lights of paper lanterns hanging at every corner. Children were running down the streets, laughing as their harassed parents chased after them. Elderly couples strolled on the sidewalks arm-in-arm, peering into the windows of the closing shops.

It was idyllic, and reminded him so much of Konoha, of all that he had lost, that it hurt his heart to stay and watch any longer. He started to run, turning from the happy scene and pelting down a side street towards where he could hear the sounds of running water.

And thinking of Konoha was even worse, because that only brought the memories of killing the Hunter-nin, of the way his palm had tapped once lightly on the man's chest, releasing electricity into his system; the way his heart had stuttered, fluttering like the wings of a moth at night; the way the whites of his eyes had bled red, blood dripping from his nose, his mouth as the clones hit him, their Raikyus destroying his circulatory system; the way he had staggered, raised bleeding hands to his face, staring in horror before falling to the earth, bleeding out, his blood mixing with the dust of the road in a brown sludge.

He ran, ran from the memory and the vision, his blood thundering in his ears and his feet slapping the pavement. He left the buildings behind, sprinted on through a meadow of short green grass and a worn path, stumbled, half-fell down a short embankment, his breath sobbing in his ears.

He stopped, tried to get his breathing to slow down as he looked around. He stood on the banks of a slow, shallow green creek, his feet sinking into the golden sand, grass on the other side, the lights of fireflies skimming over the banks and the water, reflecting the pinpricks of the stars above.

"As good a place as any," he muttered, falling down where he stood and reaching for a flat rock, sending it skipping across the creek, leaving three expanding ripples in its wake.

Ripples expanding forever, like the death of the Hunter-nin, a death that would affect everything in Konoha. His parents, losing a child; his lover, losing their precious person; his children, losing a father; his descendants, losing the chance to become real; Konoha, losing a citizen, a shinobi, a child.

He raised a hand and stared at it, dark against the twilit skies. It would have made more sense, been more fitting, to have blood crusted underneath the nails, but there wasn't any. It had been a remarkably clean kill. "I didn't just kill him," he said, weary, tears stinging in his eyes. "I killed everyone he knew."

"That is true." Yugito's hoarse voice came from farther up. He rolled his eyes up in his head, catching sight of her black boots, and sat up, resting his arm on his bent knee.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. She picked her way down the embankment, feet sinking into the sand, and sat down beside him, picking burrs out of her clothing.

"In the Kiri War, they told us to never leave a shinobi alone after their first kill. And," she shrugged, "I thought you might want some company."

"Thanks," he said, staring out across the creek at the gnarled roots of scrub trees. Yugito made a noise of acknowledgement, leaning back on one hand and staring out at the oncoming darkness.

"Hey, Yugito?" He picked up a rock as she spoke, turned it over in his hand, flung it out at the water, watching it skip twice and sink. He looked over at her, her pale blue eyes glinting in the starlight, her free hand twirling the weighted chain of her kusarigama. She looked at peace. "Who was the first person you killed?"

The humming of the chain slicing the air cut off, Yugito's expression blank. "You'll have to specify. First person I killed, period, or first person I killed consciously?"

"Uh… first person you killed, period."

Yugito let go of her kusarigama, stared out across the slow-moving creek and the water the same muddy-green as Moriko's eyes. She sighed, said in a voice filled with old, old pain,

"The first person I killed was my father, when he sealed the Nekomata in me. The Nekomata took me over and killed all seven of the people in the room." She laughed, short and sharp and mirthless. "And you know the worst thing?" She turned to face him more fully, the crows-feet around her eyes- she was only seventeen, he realized suddenly, having grown used to seeing her as older; only seventeen, but she had the stress of a fifty-year-old woman- crinkling as she smiled.

"I still don't regret it."

Naruto looked down at his hands, remembering white eyes bleeding red. "I do."

Yugito placed her hand on his shoulder, squeezed once, took her hand back as if she was afraid to get too close. "Then regret it. Keep the memory. Keep it, because when you start to feel that you've become nothing but a weapon, when you no longer feel anything for the dead, you can look back at that memory."

She looked away. The lights of the fireflies danced in her eyes, golden and remote as the stars as she inhaled, saying,

"You can look back, and know that, once upon a time when you were young, you cared."

She drifted off into silence, and so did he, the two of them sitting on the sandy bank, listening to the peeping of frogs and the liquid sounds of water rushing through the shallows. Naruto rested his head on his folded arms for a moment before turning to her.

"Thanks, Yugito." He watched her stand, brushing sand off her pants. She resettled her sword on her back and offered a hand, helping him up.

"Let's find an inn for the night."

* * *

Tomoko locked the cash box, sliding it into the secret compartment in the bottom of the desk drawer before standing, cracking her back as she crossed the room and went down the hallway, turning into the tiny kitchen the clinic staff kept for their use.

"Naota," she called, "I need his food." The cook glanced up from his cutting board, shifting the cigarette in his mouth as he jerked his head at the plate on the counter. "Thanks," Tomoko said, picking up the plate, gazing down at the unpalatable sludge of overcooked noodles and semi-rotten vegetables. '_No more than he deserves,_' she thought viciously, juggling the plate on one hand as she opened the door and continued down the hallway.

She glanced into the room where the patient was staying. His red hair was just peeking out from underneath the white blanket, the two green orbs of his eyes gleaming from the shadows underneath the cloth. His younger friend was sprawled loose-limbed in a chair, his head lolling back and mouth open, drooling. The infant on his lap was asleep as well, tiny fist knotted in his shirt. The other two travelers were in the room, seemingly making preparations to check out; the woman was redistributing the contents of their packs, while the boy was seemingly doing inventory of their food.

'_Strange that the patient hasn't slept; the painkillers we gave him should have been enough to knock a horse out._' She shrugged mentally and continued on, turning at the end of the hallway and focusing her chakra, deactivating the high-level genjutsu the staff kept running. The wall shimmered, became transparent as she stepped through, before snapping back to solidity.

This part of the clinic was nothing like the white sterility of the public portion; cinderblock walls sucked every bit of warmth from the air, dirty gray rubber covering the walls, ceiling and floors. Candles spaced apart on the walls lit the long hallway, the rubber squeaking beneath her as she hurried down the hall.

She paused, catching sight of two men standing at the end of the hallway, their faces illuminated by the candlelight shining from within the cell at the end.

"Isamu-sama? Kaito-sama? What are you doing here?" She bowed as she came closer. The mayor and his deputy turned to see her, smiling. The flickering light from the cell made their faces resemble grinning deaths-heads.

"Checking on our prisoner," Isamu said, glancing down at the plate of food she held in her hands. "He's been eating well?"

"Yes, Isamu-sama. Varg-" the foreign name was thick and coarse on her tongue, "-has always eaten everything we give him."

"And he still has yet to speak?" Kaito asked.

She shook her head. "No, Kaito-sama. He hasn't spoken since the day he killed his family." Isamu ran his tongue over his lips meditatively, beady eyes glittering like black anthracite.

"And that was… when, Kaito?"

The deputy mayor startled at being addressed, bowing jerkily as he answered, "Nineteen years ago next month, Isamu-sama."

"Hm." Isamu turned to gaze into the cell, cocking his head. "Go on in, Tomoko. I'd like to see how he reacts."

"You won't see much, I'm afraid, Isamu-sama-" she stammered to a stop as the black eyes flicked in her direction, as cold and pitiless as a snake's.

"When I wish for your opinion, Tomoko, I will ask for it." She bowed again, turned, fished the keys out of her pocket, and unlocked the cell door. The thick plastic slab swung open with a creak, and she went in, closing the door behind her and peering into the dimness of the cell.

Varg sat in the far corner, clothed only in filthy pants. The tall foreigner from the Hidden Countries raised hazel eyes that gleamed red in the candlelight to her, red like a weasel's at night, the red-gleaming eyes following her every movement. His long blond hair, the dark gold of brass, lay in dirty ropes around his shoulders, the scruff of his beard matted and badly in need of a trim. His manacled wrists lay on the rubber floor, the skin thick with scarring where the too-tight cuffs cut into him.

He watched her with complete disinterest, his eyes empty of everything, his mind having shrunken to nothing from spending nineteen long years in a hell of light and silence. Tomoko knelt and shoved the plate at him, the soupy liquid slopping out and spattering the floor.

The signs were all there, plain as day: the white shock of hair by his temple, threaded with blue strands; the black seal of lightning bolts spanning his chest. '_Fucking imbecile,_' she hissed in her mind, infuriated by the blank calm in his eyes, and stood, working up saliva and spitting at him. It hit him on the cheek and trickled down. He didn't react.

She turned on her heel and stomped from the tiny room, slamming the cell door behind her, and folded her arms across her chest, staring at the wall across the way, ashamed of having lost her control in front of her superiors.

"Well, Tomoko," Kaito said timidly, glancing at Isamu out of the corner of his eyes, "you can take comfort in the fact that this is the last time you'll ever have to feed him."

Her breath froze in her lungs as she turned around, meeting Kaito's eyes. "It's soon, then?" She glanced into the cell despite herself, at the red eyes that met her from the darkness, the blood-red eyes that made her remember the Rokubi, the weasel of lightning, the way it had turned the entire village into a cauldron of fire, killing over a thousand people.

Everyone had lost somebody.

And so the mayor had taken a child from an immigrant family from across the sea and used him as a vessel.

No one could have predicted the horror that would follow.

Tomoko squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the three charred corpses, black charcoal skin and red blisters and ivory bone. Even the little sister, her mouth frozen forever in a silent, tranquil smile.

"Yes," Isamu said, smiling, baring teeth like a spider.

Tomoko took a breath, steadying herself as she heard the rattle of Varg eating from within the cell. "And will it be a… public execution?"

"It will," Isamu confirmed. Tomoko fought the urge to smile.

"Good," she said simply, and turned and walked away.

* * *

Naruto let his pack fall as he looked around the room of the inn. There were four futons of questionable hygiene, peeling wallpaper with brown stains on the walls, and the thin carpet beneath his feet was scratchy and painful. They'd passed through the bar, a smoky room serving cheap sake and filled with even cheaper women and gotten their room key from a man who looked like he had no teeth left in his mouth.

"Home, sweet home," he said, turning around and helping Yugito carry Gaara to a futon. The Shukaku jinchuuriki's head lolled, green eyes rolling slowly back and forth, as if lost in some strange delirium. Naruto pulled the covers up to his chin and tucked him in, turning back to the others.

"It's better than some of the places I've been," Katashi said, handing Moriko off to Yugito and taking a flying leap onto the couch, which collapsed underneath him with a groan of dying springs, a cloud of dust swirling in the dim light.

"I'll go feed the brat," Yugito said reluctantly, glancing down at Moriko. "I don't suppose we have a fresh pair of earplugs?"

Katashi's head popped up from the couch cushions, and with another burst of inexhaustible energy, he was across the room and rooting through the bags, pitching a pair of earplugs at Yugito, who put them in with a fatalistic air before disappearing out the door.

Moriko began to howl as soon as Yugito finished feeding her, a piercing wail of rage that broke the twilight stillness.

"Think Moriko's going to wake up the rest of the village?" Katashi asked, tangled in his shirt as he struggled out of his clothing.

"Probably," Naruto said, watching with amusement as Katashi tripped over Gaara and fell into a table, "but you'd think she'd realize after two months of traveling with us that we're not going to let her starve."

"It doesn't work like that," Katashi said, pulling his sleeping shirt on. He spat blood into the sink and looked down, blinking away tears as he said softly, the child of the streets resurfacing, "It doesn't work like that."

He shrugged, pushing the darkness away, and bounced over to a futon, yanking the blankets up and sliding under them. "Good night!" he called, and fell asleep with enviable speed.

'_I guess spending nine years in Kiri teaches you to sleep when you can,_' Naruto thought, pulling his ratty sleeping pants on and choosing the futon between Gaara and Katashi. He stared up at the ceiling and the fan revolving in the dark for long minutes, blinking exhausted eyes, fighting back the vision of the dead man etched into his eyelids.

The lock clicked open and Yugito slid inside, holding Moriko in one arm, removing the earplugs with her free hand. Naruto rolled over enough to see both of them, checked on Gaara, glanced over his shoulder at Katashi, and allowed himself to sink into sleep.

* * *

Tsunade stared down at the photos strewn across the top of her desk with something that was rapidly approaching fury.

Four Hunter-nin, all killed by the jinchuurikis' hands.

One had been beheaded, his head still frozen in a rictus of agony; one had been shocked to death, electricity overloading his circulatory system, turning his veins into cooked noodles; the third had been immolated by lightning, nothing left of her but her ashes inside the melted piles of her clothing and her hitai-ate; the last's head had been pulverized, pulp by the glass shards that had torn apart his flesh.

It was Uzumaki and his companions' work.

She took a long breath, exhaled on a muttered curse. '_The boy is truly unredeemable, then,_' she thought, sorrow and hatred mixing into one. '_This will break his teammate's hearts._' A snort. '_If they can be broken anymore than they already have._'

"Shizune?" she called. "Bring me file number 1405." Her assistant hurried over, slid the unassuming manila folder across the desk to her.

Tsunade flipped it open, gazed at the photograph. A pale boy with black hair and eyes, gazing with enviable solemnity out of the paper. The typed name was three letters long.

'_So… Sai._' She looked at his profile, then smiled wryly. '_Congratulations; you're the newest member of Team Seven._'

* * *

**Annotations**

'_He had almost forgotten the taste of fears.'_ – An allusion to the line 'I have almost forgotten the taste of fears' from William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act Five, Scene Five.

* * *

**A/N:** Reviews are the currency of the Internet. 


	12. Chapter 12

_I'm waiting in my cold cell when the bell begins to chime_

_Reflecting on my past life and it doesn't have much time_

_'Cause at 5 o'clock they take me to the gallows pole_

_The sands of time for me are running low_

-'Hallowed Be Thy Name' by Iron Maiden

* * *

Sasuke disliked Sai the minute he met him. 

The other boy's expression was an eerily complacent smile, his eyes blank, perfect mouth shaping perfect, meaningless words. And it wasn't even as if there was anyone important there to impress with his textbook shinobi expression; they were sitting at a corner bar, Kakashi at the end of the counter engrossed in his book.

Sakura stepped forward and took the offered hand, watery smile on her lips as she said, trying and failing to hide resentment,

"It's nice to meet you."

"And you, too," Sai said, eyes flickering up as he continued, blandly friendly, "You have a very large forehead."

Sakura stared.

"Uchiha." He glanced back at Sai, hating him, hating everything about him, hating the very fact that he existed, was necessary.

"What?"

"You have a small penis." Sasuke couldn't even muster the energy to be surprised. Kakashi's lone eye peered over the top of his book, askance.

"Fine," he said, turning around and staring down at his soup. '_If he's trying to ingratiate himself, he's failing miserably-_' He spun back around as he caught the tail end of another sentence, feeling his eyes bleed red, the Sharingan whirling.

"What did you say?" he bit out, teeth grinding against each other with every syllable. Sakura's face was pale with fury, her fingers clenched into fists, vibrating with the urge to take a swing. Sai tilted his head, ran his fingers along the top of his sketchbook.

"I said that the Uzumaki traitor-"

Sasuke leaped from the stool, let it crash to the ground behind him, found himself with his hands wrapped around Sai's neck, holding him up off the ground, slamming him back into the wall of the bar.

"Don't_ever_ call him a traitor. You're not worthy to speak his _name_, you piece of filth," he hissed, fingers tightening. Sai merely met his eyes, unafraid, unconcerned. He growled, infuriated-

Some small part of him remembered Naruto's growl, the red chakra cascading over his skin, eyes red like the heart of a flame, the blinding, shocking pain of a kunai sinking into his side, held by the boy he had called 'friend'.

That didn't matter.

What mattered was the promise he had made, the promise to bring him home.

"Sasuke," Sakura said, laying a hand on his shoulder. Her hand hummed with chakra, a blade in its own right, another one of the many techniques Tsunade had been teaching her. "Leave him be."

His fingers unclenched, one by one, and he stepped back, the Sharingan fading from his eyes. Sai hit the ground, caught himself, and brushed his pants off, the damnable smile still planted on his lips.

"Well! I can see that we will all get along just fine," he chirped, smiling.

Sasuke stared at him, looked around at Kakashi, hiding from the world in his book, at Sakura, her green eyes cold like chips of jade, at the sick, horrible, hysterical parody of Team Seven, and wanted to vomit.

* * *

Gaara took a step forward, gritting his teeth against the pain as his newly healed muscle protested, and another, finally exiting the damp, cockroach-infested room and standing, blinking, in the sunlight. 

Naruto, Katashi, Yugito, and the child were waiting for him in the courtyard. He nodded to them in greeting, before frowning. '_Odd._' His brow furrowed as he turned, folding his arms, staring across the yard to the dark windows on the other side.

He had grown used to the constant flow of information given to him by Shukaku: soil composition, types of minerals, depths of subterranean aquifers. But this- this sudden new ability, this bone-deep knowing of glass, of its consistency, its composition, its distance and brittleness- was new.

He clenched his fingers into a fist, testing, and watched as cracks spiderwebbed across the panes like ice breaking up in winter, the pieces of glass trembling as gravity forced them down. His fingers uncurled, and the pieces sagged in their frames, broken, waiting to be called upon, waiting to be used as weapons.

His lips twitched in a mirthless smile. Broken weapons, sharp and dangerous, cutting open the flesh of those who wielded them: it would be hard to find a better metaphor for the jinchuuriki.

"Hey, Gaara!" Naruto called, shifting Moriko in his arms. "Let's get going!"

Gaara limped out to join them, watching Katashi finish shoving his onigiri down his throat. '_How disgusting._' He turned to Naruto, shifting his weight onto his good leg.

"Where are we going, Naruto?"

"There seems to be something going on in the town square," Yugito answered, staring pensively at the sky, pale eyes reflecting the white-blue luminescence of dawn. "I heard the sounds of construction last night; I would like to know what they're building."

"Yeah, and maybe we'll find the jinchuuriki!" Naruto said, bouncing up and down, having lost none of his boundless energy.

Katashi made a muffled noise of agreement, swallowing as he bounded towards the gate, waving them on impatiently.

"You're going to get sick," Gaara observed as the five jinchuuriki left the inn courtyard. Katashi opened his mouth to snap a retort but paused instead, his mouth open in amazement. Gaara turned to look at what had the younger boy so enthralled, and paused, brow furrowing as he understood what he was seeing. Even Yugito looked vaguely interested in the goings-on.

Huge crowds, full of people in festival garb, bright yukatas and kimonos catching the growing sunlight and reflecting it back in jeweled tones, hurried through the streets, young children atop their parents' shoulders. Bento boxes clacked and clattered against each other in their bags, the air full of the cacophony of people talking, laughing, shouting to each other, and two words, two small, solitary words, permeated the air.

"Jinchuuriki," they said, and "execution".

It had the air of a festival.

"_Look_," Katashi said, in a voice of hushed awe, pointing down at the town square, at the space between buildings where the inhabitants of Kerumigakure were gathering, pulled as if by a siren's song. Gaara looked, and wished he hadn't.

A black shape stood out against the soft morning light, harsh and cruel in its geometric precision, in the beam of oak and the bundles of oil-soaked wood piled around its base, steaming softly as the sunlight caught them. The oak was old, charred, and Gaara felt sick as he realized the number of executions that had been performed on that stake.

This, then, was why the village was said to be hidden in smoke.

"Is that-" Naruto began, voice fading as he lost the will to speak.

"Yeah," Katashi confirmed blithely, "it's a pyre. We had public executions in Kiri all the time; you don't have those in Konoha?"

Naruto's silence was his answer. Gaara glanced at him, at the slowly fading light in his eyes, and mourned the passing of Naruto's faith in humanity, in his optimism that was being chipped away with every injustice they encountered, every jinchuuriki's situation.

But perhaps, he thought, as the five jinchuuriki moved into the crowd and were swept along in the onrushing tide, perhaps it was not the fact that his faith in humankind was going that was the heartrending thing.

It was the fact that it was going in such little ways.

They were washed out into the brightness of the square. Yugito glanced about at the crowds crushing in on them from all sides and snorted in disgust, jerking a thumb at the rooftops.

"Up there." She leaped onto the top of a unagi shop, and Katashi followed. Gaara gritted his teeth as his leg buckled, a breath of pain hissing out from between his lips as he dissolved into sand and reappeared on top of the shop, collapsing into a rickety chair that Katashi helpfully pushed out for him.

Naruto stumbled and nearly fell as he came over the edge, plopping down with a sigh. "It is _way _too early to be up," he grumbled, sprawling in his chair and staring out over the bright crowds. Katashi mumbled agreement, leaning out over the edge of the roof, gazing about in fascination.

"Oh," he blurted, pointing, "there's the death cart going to pick up the victim!" Gaara formed a Sand Eye and manipulated it to peer over the rooftop, interested despite himself. The gray cart creaked through the crowds, drawn by an old spotted mare, her thin head hung low as she clopped on, expecting nothing.

"Should we follow?" Naruto asked, joining Katashi on the side and watching the cart retreat into the shadows of an alley.

"Yes," Katashi said firmly, folding his arms across his chest. "And I'm going, this time." Gaara glanced at Yugito, who was gazing at Katashi with consideration.

"That's fair. I'll go with you. Naruto, Gaara, you watch the crowd for any signs of an assassination attempt." Her lip twitched in revulsion at the seething mass of people below. "I wouldn't put it past these maggots."

"Right!" Naruto saluted, grinning, his irrepressible happiness bubbling up from inside like it always did.

"Good. Katashi, ready?" The Isonade jinchuuriki nodded, and the two leaped over the edge of the rooftop, landing on cat's feet and stealing silently away into the shadows, following the cart.

* * *

Yugito watched Katashi move with startling quickness, impressed by his stealth. '_It must have been necessary, back in Kiri._' The two chased the cart, dodging the last few stragglers who were filtering into the square, down narrow streets, the old man driving the cart hunched over, whip dangling impotently from his hand as the mare plodded down the same old paths she had trod thousands of times before. 

"You've… seen people being burned at the stake before?" she asked as the cart turned a corner, the two pursuers sheltering in a corner, watching the back wheels disappear before following.

Katashi shrugged. "Sure, lots of times."

"And once they light it, how long will we have to rescue the jinchuuriki?"

Katashi frowned, counting on his fingers, third eyelids flickering across his eyes and lips moving as he murmured to himself. He finally looked up, unhappiness etched deep in his face. "I don't know. It depends on the executioner." He hunched his shoulders, as if ashamed of his former village's barbarism. "If you got the good one- the one that killed you quicker- they'd tie a thing of black powder around your neck so your head would get blown off and you'd die faster." He snickered, the sound like waves crashing on the shore. "Except sometimes the powder was wet- actually, the powder was wet all of the time- so then it'd just burn, and that was worse."

"But if they don't do that, and they just tie the jinchuuriki and light it, then we should have about fifteen minutes before the jinchuuriki dies." He grimaced. "Except that's really cutting it close, you know?"

"Yeah," she said, leaning out from her hiding place and watching the back door into the clinic they had taken Gaara to swing open. "We will endeavor to be quick, if we can."

'_Fucking hell._' A procession of ten shinobi exited first, and then another ten, surrounding a man that stood head and shoulders above them all.

There was no way they could rescue him until the shinobi disappeared.

The man was tall, over six feet, and broad-shouldered, hazel eyes empty of everything, uninterested. His blond hair and beard were grimy with dirt and grease, and his shirtless torso was seamed with scars and recent whip marks. Two old manacles cut into his wrists, scar tissue grown around them, and chains held his hands at his waist, kept his ankles so close together that he was forced to move in a painful shuffle. He glanced back at the open door as the shinobi harried him on, yearning obvious in his eyes.

"You'd think the fool would want to get outside," one of the shinobi jeered, spitting. The glob of saliva hit the jinchuuriki's cheek and trickled down. He didn't blink, didn't react, only gazed back at the yawning darkness.

"Varg's been in that cell for nineteen years," another one shrugged as he unhooked the jinchuuriki's chains and clipped them onto the cart, flicking a whip at Varg's back. "He must want to go back in there; probably feels safe." He snickered. "Like a dog." The whip lashed out and curled around Varg's shoulders, tearing the skin open, blood trickling down the scarred back.

Katashi had bitten through his lip in fury, trembling as he controlled himself, tried to stop from leaping into the fray. Yugito laid a hand on his shoulder to calm him, watching the Isonade's midnight-blue chakra ripple over the boy's lip, repairing the long tear. '_I'll kill that one myself,_' she thought with cold loathing, watching the glass-studded tails of the whip carve long tracks in the man's flesh. The man with the whip coiled it up, aimed a kick at Varg's ankle. It connected, the sound of crunching cartilage and bone filling the air.

Varg- a strange, foreign name, nothing like the liquid beauty of the Hidden Countries' languages- ignored the blow and stepped easily up into the cart, sitting as another shinobi yanked him down, chaining him to the bench.

'_Is he mute?_' she wondered, fading back into the shadows as the cart began to move, pulling Katashi with her. '_Or perhaps he simply is just a child in his mind; he looked barely twenty, and to spend nineteen years with no one to speak to but the demon… he must have the mind of an infant._'

The injustice that had been done to him made her growl low in her throat, the Nekomata's chakra roiling in her throat, peeling mucous membranes and tonsils apart, blood trickling from the corners of her mouth.

The cart rounded the corner, and she and Katashi followed it. "Can you soak the wood from a distance with enough water to put out the fire when they start it?" she asked.

"Yep!" Katashi replied with a child's confidence, the idealistic belief of a boy who had not yet failed.

"Good," she breathed from a throat weeping blood, the two of them leaping onto the roofs, running over the tiles back to where Naruto and Gaara were waiting. "You will soak the wood, prevent them from lighting it, and while Naruto distracts the crowd by starting a brawl with his shadow clones, Gaara will use his sand to teleport the both of them back to me, so that we can all leave with no one the wiser. It will go down as an unusual disappearance, probably attributed to the demon's abilities.

Got that?"

The two of them landed silently on the roof where Gaara and Naruto were, Naruto spinning kunai around each finger. The blonde turned to them, grinning, and presented the knives.

"Twenty kunai from twenty different people. Kerumigakure's definitely intolerant; they hold grudges. Did you see him? What's he like? What's-"

Yugito held up a hand to forestall any more questions, filled the two of them in on the plan, and gazed down at the squirming crowd of imbeciles before answering, "He's tall and blond. A foreigner. Name of 'Varg'." She glanced at Moriko, at the girl who suffered still from the effects of the shed, and continued, "He seems to have the mind of a child. He looked to be in his twenties, but-"

"-the bastards said that he'd been in a cell for nineteen years!" Katashi interrupted, filled with righteous fury.

Naruto stopped spinning the kunai at Katashi's words, secreted them away in his pocket, his eyes tired, weary with grief at another testament to man's ignorance. Gaara looked up from where he was feeding Moriko. Naruto looked down at the square as the people began to shout, shoving each other aside to make room for the cart as it passed slowly into the open space.

A short laugh, empty of joy.

"Well, we aren't the lucky ones, that's for sure."

* * *

Varg blinked against the tears welling in his eyes at the too-bright touch of the sun, and looked down at the shackles around his wrists. 

The old, old pain of scar tissue creeping around the edges of the metal rings, of hands that had been gangrenous and rotting for years as the Rokubi labored furiously to repair them, to knit together broken blood vessels and dying muscle…

The pain had never left him. He thought that perhaps he did not want it to, because the shackles were safety. As long as he wore the shackles, as long as he stayed in the cell, he would never have to make a choice.

People were all around him, pushing at the cart, grabbing at his clothes, nails raking across the wounds on his back, tearing skin open. He looked, but did not see a face he knew, did not see his _mamma_, his _pappa_, Freyja.

Looking for them had become instinctual; he could not stop it, even though he knew they were dead, were buried in a potter's field somewhere. Every time someone had entered the cell, he had looked, and finally the sharp disappointment that pierced him every time began to fade, slipping away to be replaced by dull sadness.

He hadn't killed them- he knew that, clung to it with unrelenting ferocity, that knowledge the only thing that kept him sane- but he knew who had.

It had been so quick, so silent. The memory was still fresh, still sharp and vivid, the only thing he had held to himself in the gray silence of the cell.

Standing from where he sat playing in the dirt, soil encrusted beneath his fingernails, tattered pants smeared with brown mud as he held a frog in his cupped hands, peering into the red eyes, running home to the tiny little house on the edge of the wood, calling for his _mamma,_ his_ pappa,_ to come and see this new creature.

The smell. He had smelled it with strange keenness, a new strength given to him by the beast sealed into him scarcely a week before while his parents screamed for their son, held back by the imprisoning arms of shinobi. It had been a final betrayal of hope, a final death of their belief in the promise of this new land.

The smell had been pungent, acrid like lutefisk, and he had entered the house with caution, holding the tiny frog close to him as if its pulsating heartbeat could affirm life in the midst of death.

There had been a man standing over his parents, his _syster_, hidden in black, fire smoldering in his hands. His _mamma_ and _pappa_ had been as black as the murderer's clothes, skin charcoal, white bone gleaming like whales' tusks from the cracks. Freyja had been dying, then, her blue eyes burned away, her voice a high and thin, reedy wail, failing, falling, disappearing.

The man had moved, hand chopping down on the back of his neck. He fell forward, and the frog stared with cloudy red eyes at him, unmoved by his pain.

He had whispered something before falling into darkness. He couldn't remember it.

Isamu. The mayor had visited him before, but to kill him was so useless, so painfully stupid that he had never tried, staring into the man's face with fevered eyes, searching for the reflection of his family's deaths in the black eyes as cold as the northern seas that his family had sailed over in search of a better life.

The reason for their murder had been simple: they could not tell, could not let anyone know of the injustice in their village, could not let Konoha know that its vassal village had sealed a tailed beast in a foreign child, one with no allegiance.

Sound slammed into him with something like physical force, the touch of light on his skin so painful that he recoiled, squeezing his eyes shut, cowering away, fleeing.

The world was too huge, too bright, too overwhelming, so he sank back into himself, back into the place he had spent the last eternity (he did not know how long it had been since he had been thrown into the cell; he had tried for the first year to mark the days, but when his birthday came, and he spent the night sobbing fitfully in the corner, he saw the uselessness of it all).

The gray mists stretched out around him, featureless and as empty as the cell. He stared through the mists, at the blue-white bolts of lightning zipping from one spot to another, finally slashing down to scorch the ground before him. A voice spoke, echoing like thunder.

::_You're pathetic,_:: the voice sneered, the voice his only companion during those long years, the only thing that had kept him alive.

'_I know, Freyja,_' he replied, thought the only form of communication he had left, now that his voice had withered and died into silence. The voice was silent, unsettled by his easy acceptance, his delusional belief that it was Freyja.

Sometimes, Varg broke the delusions enough to know that the voice was the Rokubi, the weasel of lightning that had scythed across the forests, burning them to the ground, but-

But it was so much easier, so much better to believe that Freyja was here. Freyja, his _syster_, his everything, the one he had sworn to protect.

::_Would you like me to lie to you now?_:: the voice asked gently, lightning caressing his cheek, opening a bloody slash, a kiss of betrayal, of absolution.

Varg felt, as if from very far away, the chains binding him to the cart come undone, the rough hands forcing him onto the platform, binding him to the stake, but ignored the phantom feelings, focusing only on the voice, only on her, so that he would die with her name on his lips.

'_Yes._' His mental voice shuddered. '_Thank you, yes._'

The voice morphed, changed, taking itself from his memories, molding itself into Freyja's, into her tiny high-pitched voice.

He reached out blindly, touched nothing, lightning crackling off his hands, burning, but he would bear it to hear Frejya again.

The voice returned.

::_Jag älskar dig, broder._:: The tears on his face burned away, boiling into nothingness as the heat of the lightning arced across his skin. ::_Jag älskar dig._::

He repeated the words softly, reverently, embracing the phantom memory, the shapes of the words on his tongue as he waited for the pyre to be lit-

Something-

A child was crying, a high, thin, reedy wail.

_Freyja_.

* * *

Gaara bounced Moriko on his knee, muttering meaningless platitudes as he tried to calm her, to prevent her wails as she reached out for the empty bottle, her face purpling with fury, the seal disappearing in her skin as it turned darker and darker. '_Is she ever going to stop believing she's starving?_' 

"Hey!" Naruto whispered, jostling his shoulder. "Something's happening!" He looked up, held Moriko closer, her head resting on his shoulder as he got up.

The jinchuuriki's bowed head came up, flicking his dark gold hair back, hazel eyes fixed-

Not on them.

On Moriko.

The people in the square began to heave back and forth like a sea in a storm, their voices merging into a thunder of 'kill him'.

Yugito's fingers flickered through seals, lightning growing in her hands as she crouched on the edge of the rooftop like a sailor on the deck of a tossing ship.

The jinchuuriki's muscles bulged against the chains, veins standing out in sharp relief. There was a high-pitched creaking, the chains giving way as he grunted, yanked against the ring, tearing it free. The chain came with it, swinging between his manacled wrists.

A shinobi with a whip on his belt leaped onto the platform, tried to push him back, to secure him. Varg bared his teeth in a feral smile, whipped the chain around the man's neck, tightened it as he leaned back, the shinobi clawing at the chain as he was lifted into the air by Varg's height. Varg pushed his face into the struggling man's, twisted the chain, bones splintering and tearing like wet paper. The shinobi fell limp like a puppet, collapsing to the platform in a sodden heap as Varg let him go, turning to the next wave.

More piled onto the platform, grabbing him. Varg's eyes flashed red. He howled something- a name?- as the patch of bone-white hair by his temple grew, blue-white strands threading through it. His fingers spasmed, twisted in a shinobi's shirt, flung him back against the pole. His back broke like a dry twig, body curving around the pole in a way that the human body wasn't meant to do.

Lightning slashed down from a cloudless sky, snaked through the roiling crowds, festival yukatas and hair burning in its wake, slithered up Varg's outstretched hands. People began to scream.

Yugito jerked back, cursing, as the Raikyu in her hand was yanked free of her control, zipping down into the square, floating into Varg's hands. The jinchuuriki looked up at them, a strange intelligence in his eyes, and smiled.

Lightning flooded the square, white-hot and fearsome, crackling, snapping like the jaws of a wolf as it tore through the crowds, burning skin and hair and cloth. The shinobi closest to Varg were almost incinerated, only their masks saving them from complete blindness as the flesh on their uncovered hands blistered red and white. Screams filled the air.

Varg crouched, sprang into the air, the electricity following him, wreathing him in white. Then he was gone, and all that was left where he had been was a blue-white orb of lightning, floating, threatening and slow, over to where they stood.

The crowds were still screaming, running from the square, leaving charred clothes and skin and bones behind as they fled.

The ball of lightning descended to hover among the five jinchuuriki, humming menacingly, stinking of ozone.

Katashi, fascinated, reached out to touch-

There was a flash of light almost as bright as the sun, and Varg stood there, eyes fixed on Moriko, chain clanking in the wind. He reached out for her, tears carving white tracks through the blood and grime on his face, mouth moving in a name, voice dryer than dust, shrunken away to nothing.

'Freyja,' he mouthed.

Gaara glanced at Naruto, flicked his head at Varg in silent question. The man had just nearly incinerated a whole square of people; how could they entrust Moriko to him? Naruto met his gaze, sharing his confusion, and finally shrugged, nodding.

Gaara turned back to Varg, distrustful, but held Moriko out, sand rippling at his feet, ready to kill if Varg so much as twitched wrong. Varg took her, held her close, folded himself down onto his knees as he rocked back and forth, humming tunelessly.

"She's not Freyja," Katashi said indignantly, poking him in the shoulder. "She's Moriko!"

Varg glanced up at him, then back down at Moriko, who met his gaze calmly, muddy-green eyes fixed on his face, recognizing a new protector. Varg made a sound low in his throat, rough and hoarse, mouthing, 'Moriko.'

"This is all very cute," Yugito snapped, spinning the weighted chain of her kusarigama in one hand as she shifted back and forth restlessly, "But we have maybe ten minutes to get out of this hellhole before they notice he's up here. Gaara, can you walk on that leg?"

"Yes," he said. The medic-nins of Kerumigakure, no matter their mercenary outlook, did good work.

"Okay!" Naruto said, bounding onto the next roof as Varg followed, Moriko held in one arm. "Let's go!"

Gaara followed, Yugito and Katashi behind him, the six jinchuuriki on their way to the Land of Grass.

* * *

**Annotations**

'_It was the fact that it was going in such little ways._' – An allusion to the poem The Spring and the Fall by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

'_Would you like me to lie to you now?_' '_Yes. Thank you, yes._' – Dialogue by Illyria and Wesley from Never Fade Away, the last episode of Angel.

'_Jag älskar dig._' – "I love you," in Swedish. (Thanks for correcting my Swedish translations go to 'kyuubi's vixen, 'GreyGranian', and 'Demion69'.)

* * *

**A/N:** Review, please? All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. 


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** I apologize for the long wait for this chapter; I've been dealing with an illness in the family._  
_

* * *

_If I could just make them see that I don't need this._

_Doctor, doctor what am I here for?_

_Can't you see that I don't need this place?_

_I don't need these walls, I'm no threat at all_

- 'Medicating' by Boys Night Out

* * *

Naruto finished his bowl of soup- made with ration bars and jerky boiled in water- and set it aside, gazing out over the vista in front of him. 

The Land of Grass was a long swath of hilly country, plains of golden grasses, waving in the constant winds, rolling off into the horizon, broken only by bluffs of granite and stunted, twisted trees. The road had faded underneath their feet as they walked, and finally disappeared altogether, leaving them to walk towards the lights they could see in the distance. There were white flowers blooming all around him, and he thought of Hinata, of the quiet girl who had been his friend. '_I guess she probably isn't anymore,_' he thought with a strange bitterness.

He heard Moriko laugh, and turned around to see Varg leaning over her, pulling faces while Katashi cut off most of Varg's long, grimy hair with a spare kunai. Gaara was occupied with destroying the locks of Varg's manacles with his sand. '_That's four; where's-_'

"Uzumaki." He jerked in surprise and rolled his head back, gazing up. Yugito's serious face hovered, upside-down, over him, her good arm cradling the slowly healing broken one.

"Aw, what now? I was enjoying the sunset," he complained as he pushed himself upright. Yugito watched him move, then jerked her head at a small copse of trees further down the slope before sliding down the bluff and dragging him with her.

'_What's up with her?_' he thought, watching her move, hunched, stilted and stiff. '_She's not as graceful as she usually is._' Yugito ducked underneath a branch, threw her pack down, and slowly lowered herself to the ground, wincing with each movement.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, plopping down in front of her. Yugito blinked, as if broken from a daydream, and focused on him. Her face was white as a sheet, and damp with sweat. Dark circles lined her eyes, and her mouth was pinched with pain.

She looked… just like the first time they met her. Naruto thought back, to the dingy apartment and the cup of blood on the floor, and finally remembered the terms she had given.

"Is it the seal or something?"

"Yes," she managed, wiping at her mouth. Blood came away on her sleeve, thick with black grains. '_Oh, shit._' He leaned forward, running his hands through his hair in frustration.

"Okay, so I guess I need to reinforce it or something, but I don't know how to do that, and-" he shut up as she glared him into silence, her eyes tainted black. She reached into her pack for Katashi's slate and chalk, scribbling out,

_You need to put your hands on the seal and filter the Kyuubi's chakra into it._

Even the small motions of writing seemed to exhaust her, and she coughed, blood spattering the ground.

"Okay," he said, scooting forward on his knees to kneel behind her. Yugito undid her scarf and pulled it off, exposing the black whirls of the seal. The inky flames looked like one of those pictures in a trick book, the ones where you could see two things depending on how you looked at it: when Naruto looked closely, he saw bones etched into the ink, bones and screaming faces and skeletons, all testifying to what lived inside the seal.

He reached forward and settled his hands on her neck, feeling the piercing heat of the Nekomata's chakra scald his hands, boiling the pained sweat on her skin away.

'_Jiraiya would freak if he could see this._' The pervert probably would have gone out of his mind with jealousy over Naruto getting to sit behind and put his hands on a beautiful woman, but Naruto had to admit that there really wasn't anything to be jealous over.

Yugito was beautiful- okay, really beautiful- but she was so much more mature and world-weary than him that whatever physical attraction he may have had to her died right after meeting her. She was more like an older sister or a teacher, really, and this small intimacy was more like assistance between comrades.

She shifted impatiently, reminding him of his task. He concentrated, feeling his palms itch as the Kyuubi's chakra diffused into the air in a red glow, sucked up immediately by the gaping void of the Nekomata's seal.

The wind rustled through the mesquite trees, cool on his skin, a promise of winter. As he fed more and more chakra into the seal, Yugito relaxed minutely, her white-knuckled grip on her knees loosening, lungs stopping their bubbling rasps. He watched the tendrils of black chakra burning underneath her skin twitch as the Kyuubi's came in contact, before retracting back into the seal like a cat's claws.

A long while passed, broken by the breeze, the whistles of birds singing songs for the end of the day, and his and Yugito's breathing. Exhaustion was creeping around the edges of his vision like a gray blanket by the time the seal was reinforced, and he closed his eyes and leaned against her bony back for a moment, feeling like the Nekomata had reached inside him and dragged everything out. His bones ached with it. '_I guess now I know why all those civilians in Kumo kept falling over when the Raikage took their chakra.' _Yugito's shoulder moved under his cheek, but she said nothing, the two of them sharing companionship for a moment.

The sun had set while he was occupied, the moonlight washing the world in silver. A coyote yipped at the bottom of the bluff, making him jerk upright in surprise at the piercing noise. Yugito ignored it, cracking her knuckles and mumbling her thanks.

"You're very quiet," Yugito said, straightening, turning her head enough to glance at him. Her blue eyes shone in the darkness, courtesy of the- what was it, Gaara had given him the name- tapetum lucidum on the back of her retina. '_Assassination missions must have been a bitch._' "What are you thinking about so intently?"

Naruto laughed, scratched at the back of his head. "Well, I had this teacher, Jiraiya, back in Konoha?" He waited for her nod, and continued, "And Jiraiya was a real pervert; he would go to all the women's baths and spy on them. He called it 'research', 'cause he wrote that porno series. Icha Icha Paradise?"

"The name is familiar."

"Yeah, and-" Naruto stuttered to a stop, confused. "Wait a minute, you know about Icha Icha Paradise?" He grinned, scrambled around to sit in front of her. "I got to hear this."

Yugito looked down, scratching at the back of her neck as she avoided his eyes. "I had the entire collection in my apartment," she mumbled. "When… everything… got to be too much, I could read that tripe and pretend that somewhere everything was perfect. The literary value was poor, of course."

Naruto flopped back into the short, silver grass, stared up at the pale light of the moon peeking through the black lace of the mesquite branches overhead, interlacing with each other like braided hair. "I don't know," he said thoughtfully, "I guess it's probably better if you've been in love or something."

"I've been in love," she said. Naruto blinked, rolled his head to the side to look at her- she was staring meditatively off into the distance, elbow propped easily on her knee, other hand splayed in the grass- then back over as he heard Gaara's slow footsteps.

The Shukaku jinchuriiki ducked underneath the branches and joined the two of them, green eyes glinting like wolf's eyes in the darkness.

"Katashi is chasing lizards," he said by way of greeting, sitting down beside him, so that Naruto was between the other two. Gaara paused, and said, his tone vaguely worried, "Varg requested that I not remove the manacles."

"He spoke?" Yugito asked.

"No. He indicated physically that he would like to keep them on," Gaara said. "I am beginning to think that he may have become selectively mute from the isolation."

"Okay, selective mutism, whatever," Naruto waved it off impatiently, turning back to Yugito. "So you've been in love? Who was it with?"

Gaara stared at Yugito, who glanced back and forth between them both. "I assume I'm not going to be able to avoid answering the question?" she said drolly.

"Nope. So spill!"

Yugito looked out across the vista spread out in front of them like a blanket of grass silvered by moonlight, her mouth pressed into a pensive line. "It was an older shinobi, commander of the platoon I was assigned to as an adviser during the Kiri Wars. His name was Kohaku." She leaned back on her good arm. "I was thirteen; he was twenty-two." She snickered, the sound carrying no joy.

"I lived outside the platoon's camp, and wasn't allowed inside the perimeter except in the event of an attack. We never met." She looked up at the sky through the mesquite branches, black shadows etched like ink on her pale skin. "I think that perhaps the only reason I loved him is because of that; because I didn't know him, and he didn't know me. Because I could love him without having to see hatred in his eyes."

There was a long silence, the wind the only sound. Her fingers dug into the ground, ripping small tufts of grass up by the roots as she finished, sounding ancient and weary, "I loved him. It was the purest kind of love, untainted by truth, for he never knew I existed."

"What happened to him?" Gaara asked.

"He was burned to death in an explosion," Yugito said, her voice flat, uncaring. "I remember it very clearly. He died like a coward, screaming for God to let him live." There was an ironic smugness in her voice at another confirmation of man's 'weakness'. "God did not come. And then I used his body to kill the Kiri commander, and watched as it fell into the ocean and sank to the bottom. He lies there still, far from home."

"Well, that was a cheerful story!" Naruto said, sitting up. Yugito glanced at him, raising a brow.

"You were expecting cheerfulness?"

"I agree," Gaara said, "You shouldn't expect levity from her."

"Yes," Yugito agreed, before she paused, turning to Gaara, offended. "I'm trying to decide if that's a compliment or an insult."

"I'd go for insult," Naruto said, springing upright as Yugito growled and reached out, her fingers just missing the hem of his shirt. "Hey, I'm not the one who said it!" He pointed at Gaara, who had the gall to try and look completely innocent. The look was so stupid on Gaara's face that Naruto couldn't control his snickers. Yugito gazed at Gaara thoughtfully before turning back to him.

"That's true, but I like him better. You, on the other hand, are a convenient stress reliever, so I'd rather hit you."

"But I'm too cute to hit," he protested, flopping down beside her. "And anyway, your arm's still broken. You shouldn't be hitting anyone with that!"

"True," she said, "And I shouldn't touch you anyway. You might have germs of some sort."

"I resent that remark," he said, turning his nose up.

"I resent _you_," Gaara muttered.

"That also works," Yugito said amiably.

Naruto stared up at where the stars were glinting in the darkness of the sky, and no matter that he was a missing-nin; no matter that he was far from home with a baby and a brat and a selectively mute giant and a psychopathic woman and a boy with a tendency to go into homicidal rages; no matter that he was going to spend the rest of his life running;

There was no place on Earth he would have rather been at that moment.

* * *

"You are telling me that you've _failed_?!" 

Kabuto stood, hidden by flickering candlelight, in the corner, watching the remnants of Sound Four flinch and cower from Orochimaru's fury.

"We tried," Sakon said, voice ragged with pain as the cursed seal on his neck burned. Kabuto winced. He knew that pain firsthand; had been the one to perform the experiments necessary to find a level of agony that could be sustained without killing the recipient.

"Yeah," Tayuya added, flinching as one of the snakes writhing on the floor bared its fangs at her. "We tried to get the little runt when he was alone, but he was never alone. He trains with his team constantly, and he even sleeps at their houses most nights."

Kidomaru breathed out in a pained voice, "And when he was finally alone and we attacked him, the rest of his team showed up! They killed Jirobo; we had to leave his body behind."

"Did you even have a chance to relay the offer?" Orochimaru asked, leaning forward from his seat on his chair. His gangrenous arms lay limply on the chair arms, oozing pus through the bandages.

"Yes." Sakon said, "We even mentioned Itachi, but he refused. He said that his priorities had changed, and that he needed to stay in Konoha to fulfill them. That's when his team showed up."

"Get out," Orochimaru said, his voice a low hiss. The bodyguards glanced at each other, then at him, scrambling to get away as Orochimaru screeched, "Get _out!_"

Kabuto shoved his glasses up his nose, crossed to where his lord slumped in the chair, exhausted.

"Your body is decaying rapidly," he said, performing a preliminary scan. The signs were not good: most of the lower extremities were already undergoing necrosis, and his kidneys were shutting down at an alarming rate. He reached for Orochimaru's arm, feeling the telltale warmth on his skin, the wetness of pus.

"I'm well aware of that, Kabuto," Orochimaru rasped. Kabuto let Orochimaru's arm drop, wiping his palm off on his pants before crossing in front of his lord, gazing thoughtfully at him.

"At the rate you're going, you have a week before this body expires. And since they've failed…" he trailed off significantly. Orochimaru, no fool, picked up on his meaning immediately.

"The Uchiha will not be here in time." Orochimaru bowed his head, dark hair covering his face. The muggy air was filled with his rasping breaths, his deadened fingers twitching spasmodically. "Very well." Orochimaru looked up, yellow eyes intent. "Bring me the vessel. I will have to wait three years, but in the span of my ambitions… three years is nothing."

"Yes," Kabuto agreed. He turned and left the room, watching the Sound- he was unsure what to call them, but settled on three- Three's heads hide behind pillars. "Don't worry," he called. "Orochimaru has decided not to kill you."

He heard Kidomaru sigh in relief, and smiled. "Yet."

* * *

Tsunade gazed down at the latest report from Kerumigakure. 

'_Twelve dead, three likely to die from severe burns, twenty-five injured. The hand at work here is obvious._'

She slammed her fist onto her desk, cursing under her breath. "I knew I should have sent a team to bring the jinchuuriki here earlier."

"Lady Tsunade?" Shizune peered around the doorway, brow wrinkled in a frown. "What's wrong?"

"I'm an idiot, that's what's wrong!" She saw Shizune flinch, and felt regretful immediately. "Sorry," she said, running fingers through her hair in frustration. "It's just- I found out a few weeks ago that Kerumigakure had a jinchuuriki of their own. The file that had the story was buried incredibly deeply- Kerumi didn't want this getting out- so Sandaime never knew. They had good reason for burying it so deep: the jinchuuriki's a foreigner, from one of the countries across the sea, so he wouldn't have had any allegiance to us anyway. And considering the mayor ordered the boy's family killed…" she laughed, no joy in it. "Well, there's no love lost between him and the Land of Fire.

I _should_ have sent a team to Kerumi to pick the jinchuuriki up as soon as I knew, but I overestimated Uzumaki's travel time. And now…"

Shizune took a few steps into the room. "And now, Lady Tsunade?"

"Now there's fifteen people dead for my folly." She closed her eyes, reached for her sake cup and grunted when she found it empty. "We'll need to send an investigative team, if only for appearance's sake."

"I'll go tell the front desk," Shizune said, disappearing out the door.

'_I shouldn't even have to send one,_' Tsunade thought wearily. '_I already know what they'll find._'

* * *

The jinchuuriki limped into Kusa as the sun climbed higher in the sky, beating down on them. Naruto glanced about at the others: all of them were dusty with the dirt of travel, their ragged clothes flapping in the constant wind. The soles of Katashi's sandals had worn out and were slapping the ground with every step, and Varg's back had turned into an open wound, the stripes of missing skin brown with sluggish blood, the ragged edges of the gashes bright red from infection. Yugito was cradling her arm close to her body, mouth set in a hard line of pain, while Gaara trudged beside her, head bowed. Even Moriko was silent. Hunger gnawed at his belly like a beast. 

The low sod houses of Kusa blended into the waving grasses, and the inhabitants of the village regarded them with interest.

Varg stopped, hitched Moriko's sling closer to him, and gazed about the village. He grinned, exposing white teeth, and pointed at a sprawling building further down the road. A sign flapped in the wind, reading 'hospital'.

::_There's a jinchuuriki there,_:: the Kyuubi said, subsiding back into sullen silence as soon as he finished.

"Hey, guys," he called. Katashi looked up from where he was leaning over the communal fountain, his hands wrist-deep in the water. The scummy water cleared as soon as he touched it, and he bent down and took a drink before sauntering back to where the others stood.

"This place sucks," Katashi said, folding his arms across his chest. "There aren't even any rivers around."

"Let's go to the hospital," Naruto suggested, taking a step down the road, his feet sinking into the ruts of wagon wheels.

"We're almost out of money," Gaara said, staring morosely down into the small bag of coins.

"I'll deal with that when we get there," Naruto said, waving them further on down the road. Children, dressed in dusty leather trousers and wide-brimmed hats, gazed at them from the shadows of doorways, their faces already lined from the wind and sun.

"You sure you can do that?" Katashi asked skeptically, fingers drumming on the hilt of Yugito's sword (although, really, it wasn't Yugito's sword anymore; Yugito had finally said that if Katashi liked it so much, he could have the damn thing).

"Of course! You shouldn't doubt me," Naruto tossed over his shoulder as they entered the lobby. The room was dark and cool, a relief from the dry heat of the outdoors, the tiled floor easing the pain of his blistered feet. Katashi wandered over to the corner where a tinny radio was playing to fiddle with the dials.

"Can I help you?" a medic-nin asked, catching sight of them.

"Yeah," Naruto said, "I've got blisters, my friend here's got an infected back, my other friend's arm got broken and isn't healing right, and the baby has- what'd you say it was, Gaara?"

"Failure to thrive," Gaara said.

"Right," Naruto said, facing the medic-nin again and giving his best 'I'm totally not a missing-nin' smile.

"Uh…huh," the medic said, shoving his glasses further up his nose. "Why don't you just step up to the front desk and-" he cut off, face turning the color of curdled milk.

"What?" Naruto asked, stepping forward. "You okay?"

"Jin-" the man stuttered, finger rising, pointing- Naruto turned, and saw Moriko's tattooed face peering from the wrappings, muddy eyes fixed on the medic as she gurgled happily, reaching out with a chubby fist- at Moriko.

Varg crouched over Moriko, a bass growl rumbling in his chest, eyes flashing red and white threads spreading through his hair. White-blue chakra flickered on his skin.

"_Jinchuuriki!_" the man howled, turning and sprinting from them like the hounds of Hell were biting at his heels. His screams of 'jinchuuriki' echoed down the hallway, the sounds of his feet on the tile disappearing.

"That little-" Yugito snarled, starting forward.

"Wait," Gaara said, grabbing her shoulder and jerking his head at the hallway. "He's no doubt alerted the rest of the hospital. We need to find a place to hide until we can leave."

"Hey!" Katashi was over in the corner, tugging at a handle in the wall, cleverly hidden behind the radio. "This has to do something."

"Varg," Naruto said. The big man, understanding immediately, handed off Moriko to Gaara and bounded over to where Katashi stood, hand curling around the handle and wrenching the door open.

The hidden door creaked open in a shower of plaster and paint, and Varg ducked and went into the tiny hallway. The others followed, Yugito closing the door behind them.

The hallway was deteriorating, cinderblocks making up the white hallway and sucking all the warmth from the air. Their breath clouded. Naked light bulbs dangled on strings, tossing shadows on the wall.

"Look," Katashi whispered. The jinchuuriki all paused in their trek down the long hall, gazes turning to where Katashi was pointing.

'_Awesome._' The shadows were twisting on the walls, tiny eyes glinting from the depths as the shadows watched them move with ill-hidden interest. '_Sentries. Definitely a jinchuuriki, then._' Naruto pushed past Varg and took the lead.

There were old footprints in the dust on the floor, and he made sure to step in the imprints, the jinchuuriki leaving no record of their passage. There was the distant rumbling of pipes in the walls, and exposed wires crackled from overhead.

Varg looked blissful as he reached for them, electricity sparking off the wires and into his hands, tumbling over his skin like water droplets. Naruto raised a brow, but didn't say anything. '_If he wants to get his jollies fiddling with sparks, then good for him, I guess._'

An old wooden door was up ahead, white paint flaking off the wood in curlicues. He reached for the tarnished brass handle. It turned surprisingly easily, and the hinges turned without a squeak.

"Whoa," he muttered, stopping on the threshold.

The room was full of cold white light streaming in from the frosted glass set in the roof. Bookcases marched back to the far wall like ants. A surgery table with racks of tools was in the nearest corner, and-

"Yugito," he whispered, pointing. "Know what that is?" The woman stopped beside him, her gaze turning to the strange sight. A sword was leaning on the wall next to the surgery table. It was an odd sword: most swords were katanas, single-edged and curved, but this sword was short, double-edged, and straight.

But even that wouldn't have been unusual, except for the fact that there was green fire, imbued with demonic chakra, burning on the blade. It didn't flicker or wane, burning steadily on the metal.

"A demonic artifact," Gaara observed. "There must be a jinchuuriki nearby."

"No, really?" Katashi sneered, spitting bloody saliva at the drain in the floor as he wandered to the nearest bookcase. "These books are all crappy; I can't even understand what they're talking about!" He read off a title, "'Morphologic analysis of amniotic fluid cells obtained by amniocentesis'. Right, whatever."

The little shadows twisted in the corners, white eyes fixed on them. There was a loud clattering behind a bookcase. Yugito shoved Varg behind her, Naruto moving to her side.

"Hello?" a small voice called. Naruto turned, and saw her.

Her black hair was tied back messily, and brown eyes blinked fearfully from behind spectacles. She moved out from behind the bookcase, smiling nervously, wringing her hands as she looked them all over. She was just about his height, and stocky, her frame filling out the white lab coat. A seal covered her left ankle, twining up over her leg and disappearing into her baggy shorts. She moved with the carefulness of someone raised around adults, always trying to impress them.

The shadows chattered as she got closer, slithering over the floor and crowding around her like a pack of dogs, the tone of their voices adoring.

She paused before them, glancing at each of the jinchuuriki in turn. "Can- can I help you?" Her voice was soft, her expression pathetically eager to please.

"Yeah," Naruto said, grabbing her hand and shaking it. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and these are my friends-" she was staring down at where his hand was gripping hers with shock, "-oh, I'm sorry, what's your name?"

"I'm Shinobu Kato," she said, extricating her hand from his grasp. "Who are all of you?"

"Oh, yeah. That's Yugito, Gaara, Katashi, Moriko, and Varg," he said, pointing at each of them. "We're jinchuuriki."

Shinobu blinked, confused, and said, "You- you are?" Yugito nodded stiffly, reaching up with her good hand and loosing her scarf, exposing the black swirls on ink on her skin. Shinobu stared at the seal, then gazed at the others, her eyes glossy with tears. "You are." Her voice cracked. "You all are." She looked down at her ankle and laughed, tears thick in her voice, "I guess it's pretty obvious that I am, too."

"Which one are you?" Gaara asked. Shinobu looked at him and smiled again, this smile free of the cringing fear.

"The Hachibi, the eight-tailed dragon with power over demons and the sword, Kusanagi." She nodded at the sword leaning in the corner, the green fire increasing as she looked at it. "Um… I don't want to be rude or anything, but-" she steeled herself with the air of someone who had been beaten for asking questions and blurted out in a rush, "-why are you here?"

"Well, that's a long-" Naruto shut up as Shinobu's mouth flattened into a thin line.

"Oh, for-" she pushed past him and stalked behind Varg, leaning close to his torn back. "You've got a staph infection, not to mention two or three others, and-" she appeared in front of him, grabbed his wrist and gazed down at it, muttering to herself. Varg stared at her, bewildered. Naruto met Yugito's gaze, shrugging helplessly. '_I guess she's all shy until she sees something she can go all 'psycho-medic-nin' on._'

"Well, your wrists are turning gangrenous, and you really need to take those manacles off-" she reached for them, only to stumble back as Varg yanked his wrists closer to him, hunching his shoulders. Shinobu gazed down at the circles of cold iron for a long moment, and finally nodded, reaching out and laying a long-fingered hand on his muscled arm. "Okay, then. I won't." She smiled, her mouth trembling with sorrow for him, and said, "Will you get on the table? I've got some bandages and medicine I can use."

Varg glanced at Naruto, who nodded, and set Moriko down gently on a side table, lifting himself onto the surgery table. Shinobu swooped down, armed with tubes of smelly liquid and rolls of bandages, and in under two minutes, Varg's back was fixed.

"So, you're a medic-nin, I guess?" Katashi asked. Shinobu blinked.

"I- I'm sorry," and she really did look regretful, "I can't understand you." Katashi growled and turned his back, stomping off into the stacks. Shinobu stared after him, biting her lip. "I didn't mean to offend him," she said.

"It's okay," Naruto said. "He'll get over it. But you are a medic-nin?"

"Yes, I am." She glanced at her books. "I have a huge amount of chakra, so when I was six, they put me back here to learn. They bring me the hard cases." She shrugged. "I haven't been out of here since then."

"Would you like to?" he asked.

"You could do that?" she breathed, her eyes wide behind her glasses.

"Yep," he said, launching into the explanation of why the jinchuuriki were gathering. Shinobu took it in with interest.

"I always used to ask the doctors if I could go out when I was young." She sighed. "They wouldn't ever let me, because they said I was a threat. But I'd love to go with you, I really would."

Varg hopped off the table and picked up Moriko, handing her to Shinobu, who took her gently, stroking the black claws she had in place of fingernails. "Oh, she's beautiful. How old is she?"

"Uh… eight months, I think. We've been on the road for two months, more or less."

Shinobu's brow furrowed. "Eight months? Are you sure?"

"Yes," Yugito bit out.

"Well, I mean- she's so small." Naruto shared a frown with Gaara as the Shukaku jinchuuriki said,

"We found her in a shed when she was six months old. She had not been fed for two weeks. I think she had not been changed or interacted with for longer than that."

Shinobu looked down at Moriko, swallowing hard. She rocked Moriko for a bit, and finally said, "Has she shown any strange symptoms?"

"She won't stop crying whenever we finish feeding her or giving her a drink," Naruto said, "and she doesn't seem to feel pain, either." Shinobu set Moriko down on the table and disappeared into the stacks. They could hear her muttering and grabbing books.

"Ah-hah!" she shouted distantly, appearing again with a stack of books in her arms. She fell into a chair by a rickety desk and plopped the stack down, flipping two books open and glancing between them.

"Okay, so she's got hyperphasia, which is the insatiable appetite; polydipsia, the constant thirst; and pain agnosia, which is the insensitivity to pain." She opened another book, this one filled with charts, "And she's in the lowest one per cent of the population for height and growth rate…"

Shinobu slammed her book closed and spun on the chair. "She has Kasper Hauser Syndrome."

"What's that?" Naruto asked. Shinobu pushed her glasses up her nose, her voice changing to 'formal lecture mode'.

"It's a syndrome that normally manifests itself in victims of severe childhood physical and mental abuse. The effects are long-lasting."

"What effects?" Gaara asked. Shinobu shrugged, ticking them off on her fingers as she stood and crossed over to Moriko, wrapping her in the ratty blankets.

"There's a lot. You got to her to time to prevent the difficulty in forming relationships with peers, so I'm sure the social aspects won't come into play. However, she's always going to be tiny, extremely so, in both height and weight. The pain agnosia will always be there; however, some consider that an asset for a shinobi. We had a Clan that was based around that genetic trait. It died out early, though, because most of the children died young from wounds that they didn't feel." Shinobu handed Moriko back to Varg. "The worst effect will probably be that of cognitive impairment." She looked at Naruto's confused expression and elaborated, "She will always lag behind in learning."

She stopped, realizing the impact of what she had said, and said uncertainly, "I- I hope that won't change your feelings for her."

"No," Gaara said with finality, making it clear that the subject was closed.

Yugito stepped forward, holding her broken arm. "May I see you in private?"

"Of course!" Shinobu said, ushering her past another door. The door closed, blocking out the view. There were a few minutes of low murmurs seeping out from underneath the door, some words distinguishable: 'puberty' and 'starvation'.

Shinobu spoke.

There was a long pause before she spoke again, the silence punctuated with one word:

Sterile.

Then a loud cracking noise, as if someone had hurled a chair into the wall. There was the sound of kneecaps striking stone, and a low, broken snarl.

He heard Yugito collapse, but he never heard her cry.

* * *

**A/N:** Review, please? All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. 


	14. Chapter 14

_And the earth becomes my throne_

_I adapt to the unknown_

_Under wandering stars I've grown_

_By myself but not alone_

_I ask no one._

- 'Wherever I May Roam' by Metallica

* * *

"And then he tripped over a box of books on skin disorders, and his hand went into the biohazard container for used needles!"

Naruto gasped, grinning. "No way!"

Yugito gritted her teeth. After slipping out of Kusa under cover of night, Shinobu had begun to spew out all the words she hadn't been able to speak when she was a forced recluse. Yugito wouldn't have minded the constant chatter, if it was on weaponry or new jutsus or battle, but… no.

It was inane babbling with little purpose. Naruto had mentioned that he loved ramen, and apparently Shinobu shared that. So they spent two hours rambling on about different varieties and methods of cooking it before moving on to stories of people they hated.

Even Katashi had gotten involved, his ruffled feathers over Shinobu's misunderstanding soothed by her openness and easy laugh.

"Someone's coming," Gaara said from farther ahead, turning his head to look back at them. The tattoo was black in the starlight.

Shinobu went silent, a veil of fear passing over her face. Her lab coat was bright white in the starlight, a beacon for enemies. '_That'll have to be destroyed._' Her fingers clenched on Kusanagi's hilt, the doused flames springing back to life, green and flickering in the soft breeze. The air smelled of dust and ozone, dry lightning crackling in the distance. The older girl knelt and reached for a shadow, her fingers tracing the edge of Naruto's.

White eyes glittered in the depths, the demons twisting around each other before moving, teleporting to her shadow, then to Katashi's, to Gaara's, the white eyes flickering through the darkness and receding into the grass.

"They should warn us whenever anyone gets within a three mile radius," Shinobu whispered, dark eyes hollow behind her glasses. "That's as far as they can go."

"So, how many do you want to take?" Naruto asked, two clones appearing behind him. There were no Raikyus; they could not afford to give away their positions. She studied him. His stance was too wide, unbalanced, and he kept shifting back and forth unnecessarily. That would have to be remedied.

"I-" Shinobu glanced fearfully back down the road, "I'm not going to. I don't fight."

"You_don't fight?_" She was surprised at how much scorn her voice could contain. "You're a jinchuuriki, for fuck's sake! There isn't any room for pacifists in that world." Naruto was swallowing, as if he wanted to intervene.

Shinobu folded her arms across her chest, the motion making her look defensive, forlorn. Her voice was soft, but firm. "I didn't say that I was a pacifist. I understand that killing is a necessary evil." She stood straighter, filled with conviction. "Killing may be necessary, but I will not be the one to do it."

"So you're an idealist?" Yugito sneered. "Idealism is the refuge of the weak."

Shinobu shrugged. "That may be true, but I will always be proud that I never gave into cynicism." She blinked, knelt again, and let a demon slither up her arm. Yugito watched it, unsettled by its liquid movements, the vague outlines of fins and wings she could see in its inky depths. The demon chattered.

"It says there are twelve genin coming, all mounted."

'_Genin? How insulting. The least they could have done was send chuunin._'

Katashi shouldered off the pack containing their weapons and unsheathed his sword (Yugito stared at the moonlight washing down the blade like milk over obsidian, and could not find it in herself to regret the loss), swinging the sword a few times to loosen his joints. Naruto created two Shadow Clones, one of them taking a spool of nin-wire, the other a packet of smoke bombs. The two clones slipped off into the darkness, dusty black clothing blending in with the waving grasses.

"Varg, give Moriko to Shinobu." The tall man made an unhappy sound, but did as she said. Shinobu took the child and held her close. "Shinobu, your task is to capture the horses. They'll need to be blindfolded to prevent further injury." Yugito grinned internally. "You should use your lab coat."

The older woman nodded and disappeared into the foliage, white cloth showing up against the surrounding darkness like a lighthouse in Kiri. Yugito unsheathed her kusarigama, uncoiling the weighted chain and spinning it as she turned to Gaara. "Pull the riders from the horses as soon as they break the perimeter. Katashi, go into the bushes. Your job will be to clean up any that I don't get."

Katashi set his jaw. "I'm staying out here. I'm not going to hide in the bushes like some coward. And anyway, why should we listen to_you_?"

The Nekomata shrieked at this affront, and Yugito felt the itching sensation of her eyes bleeding black. Katashi swallowed audibly, taking a step back as she stepped forward, her smoking hand clenching in his tattered shirt. She leaned close, smelling the blood in his mouth, and said, flat and soft and cold,

"Because you are a jinchuuriki, and I will not see any of you dead before me. Now get in the bushes."

She let him go, watching as he scrambled into the ditch on the side of the road. Naruto joined him, spinning black-painted kunai on his fingers. '_Good._'

"Varg." The blond man turned to her, his bearded face ingratiating, his stance cringing like a kicked puppy. "Can you kill the first wave?" She wasn't even sure if he understood her, but he nodded. '_That'll have to do._'

She slid into the ditch with Gaara, grimacing as cold water splashed against her legs, her thin pants clinging to her skin. The distant sound of Naruto's clones popping out of existence floated over the grass.

The trip wire, laced with smoke bombs, gleamed faintly in the moonlight, stretched across the long white road.

The riders burst into view, mounted on horses running like the tide, their mounts' eyes white and rolling in their heads, flaring nostrils flecked with white foam, ears pinned back. The thunder of hooves on the road sounded like the beating of the war drums, and dust rose in little clouds from the road, shining white in the starlight.

One of the riders snatched up a stalk of grass, a jutsu hardening and lengthening the blade into a sword. A girl performed a seal, tendrils spreading from the flower in her hair to cover her body like armor. The others unsheathed swords and readied kunai as they came closer.

Varg stood alone in the road, sparks dancing on his fingers, the faint, luminescent shine of lightning in his veins illuminating him as a shape of twisted light. His arms were outflung, head tilted back to the sky as dry lightning arced overhead, cracking and booming like glaciers breaking apart in summer.

The first horse hit the wire.

Varg smiled.

Lightning slashed down from the sky as thick, choking black smoke billowed across the road. Horses reared and screamed, the sound high and wailing, as sand slithered serpentine across their fur, coiling around their riders' ankles and jerking them from the saddle.

Naruto and Katashi burst from the undergrowth, plowing into the dazed genin like knives through butter. One died immediately, spitted through the throat on Katashi's blade. The dead one's horse reared, heavy hooves striking out at Naruto's unprotected head.

Varg slid in the way, throwing his manacled wrists up. A hoof struck it, sparks flying through the smoke, and skidded off. Varg howled as bones broke, lightning spidering out across the road, leaving cracks in its wake.

Yugito leaped over a sword blade, flipping in mid-air to land atop a frightened horse, the weighted chain of her kusarigama zipping out and around the necks of three genin, fighting back to back. She planted her feet and fell back over the horse, hauling on the chain.

The sound of their necks breaking was soft, hard to hear amongst the screams of horses, Gaara's cracked laughter as he crushed one of them into shreds, Varg's howls of fury, the genins' harsh breaths as they fought for their lives.

Yugito landed on her shoulder. She felt cartilage twist, a bright shoot of pain flowering inside her shoulder, but ignored it, rolling out from underneath the trampling hooves of the horse. Shinobu slipped up beside her, blindfolded two of the horses with scraps torn from her lab coat, and led them away to where six other horses were waiting.

Water was flying off Katashi's blade as he ducked, spun, and swung, beheading one. Blood flecked his face. Two of the others inhaled water and choked as the droplets multiplied inside their lungs, faces bulging, purpling, blood-tinged water pouring from their mouths.

Katashi turned to face them. His hazel eyes were dilated with joy and fury, blood-tinged teeth bared, blood smeared across his face. She saw the shinobi of Kiri in him, the poor, stupid bastards who had been too stubborn to give up.

He lunged, blade sliding into one's belly. Clear liquid, like blood transmuted in water, poured from her as she screamed. The other fell as Naruto shoved a Raikyu through his throat, water bleeding from his arteries, drowned a thousand miles away from the ocean.

Yugito felt the air move behind her, shifted her grip on her kusarigama, and spun, the blade sinking into a girl's belly. She ripped upward, cloth and skin tearing, spilling stinking bowels onto the road, the girl's body lacerated into so much meat, no more capable of creating life, only of death, of decay.

Just like Yugito's body. She snarled at that, at the reminder of her village's abuse, of her sterility, and spun, executing a roundhouse kick. The Nekomata's catlike grace served her well as she bent back like a willow battered by wind, the blade passing harmlessly over her, her kick impacting the boy's chest and sending him stumbling back into Naruto's kunai.

Two were left, and she closed with one, her chain entangling the boy's legs. He stumbled, leaving her an opening. Her kusarigama flicked out, opening his throat like an envelope. He choked, blood staining her shirt, and fell, smiling throat dyed red.

Varg battered the other into submission with only his fists, no shinobi grace or efficiency in his movements. Nothing but hate and stubbornness kept him going. The girl collapsed to the road.

Yugito stood, panting, blood dripping from her kusarigama. The battle had taken less than five minutes. The moonlight illuminated the road, white with patches of dark blood flowing over the dust. The black shapes of the slain littered the scene in their crumpled disgrace, hands outflung, eyes clouding over.

They were already starting to whisper to her, of families and teachers and pets and girlfriends and boyfriends, and she clapped her bloody hands to her ears and whimpered as their lives came crowding into her head, the lives she had ended.

She took a ragged breath, stuffed her pain underneath her shield of arrogance, and stood, barking out in a harsh voice, "Pathetic." How stupid of them, to think that they could pose a challenge. Relaxed, she took a deep breath and smiled smugly.

"Yugito!" Katashi's voice, panicked-

She turned, just in time to see the warhorse's hoof slam into her shoulder. Bone splintered and cracked, pain, white-hot, crackling inside her like lightning. She fell into the darkness of unconsciousness with relief.

* * *

Naruto knelt at Yugito's side, glancing to make sure that Varg had a grip on the horses before staring at Yugito again. Her face was white as bone, blood trickling from the corners of her mouth as the Nekomata repaired her damaged tissues. '_If you didn't always have to gloat every damn time you win, this wouldn't have happened,'_ he thought in a sad attempt to push away the terrified grief pushing at his throat.

"I'll handle it," Shinobu said, kneeling beside him and placing her hands over Yugito's chest. Green chakra flickered in the darkness, diffusing out in clouds of green, misty light. Shinobu's brows drew together in irritation as she shoved more chakra in, the clouds floating around them like exploding fireflies.

Yugito's eyelids cracked open, pale blue eyes rolling underneath her lids to gaze at Shinobu. "Won't work," she muttered, wincing with each word, "Nekomata prevents it."

"How in the world have you survived without being able to have medical jutsu performed on you? You can't fight off genjutsu, and… I mean, you've already got a cracked radius, and now your shoulder's screwed up, too." Shinobu said. Yugito glared. Shinobu ignored it, prodding gently at Yugito's shoulder with her fingers, muttering an apology as Yugito hissed in pain.

"There are a few ligaments torn, and the glenoid fossa is cracked down the middle. The clavicle is splintered." Shinobu bit her lip, shoving her glasses up her nose. "The Nekomata's doing a good job healing you, and the splinters should be destroyed by its chakra without too much trouble, but I'd feel better if I could wrap your shoulder."

"Fine." Yugito struggled to sit up, Shinobu pulling out a length of bandage and immediately setting to work. Yugito tested the wrapping, grunting.

"I guess… you do have your uses, after all." Shinobu giggled, offering a hand to help her up. Naruto slid an arm around Yugito's waist, the two of them pulling her to her feet. Yugito steadied herself with a hand on Naruto's shoulder.

"The Nekomata should heal it all up within three days," Shinobu said..

"I've finished moving the bodies off the road," Gaara said as he joined them, the blood-soaked sand trickling back into his gourd. He looked sickened, somehow, at the blood inside his gourd, a far cry from the evil boy in Konoha.

"All of the genin are dead?" Yugito asked.

"Yes," Shinobu said, her fixed smile wavering. Yugito frowned, but dismissed it.

"The horses?" she asked.

"Right over there," he said, pointing at where Varg was scratching their necks and playing with their manes, as happy as a shinobi in a room full of kunai. Katashi was standing near the horses, fascinated.

"You mended Varg's arm already?" Yugito asked, surprised.

"Yep," Shinobu said, leading Yugito to the horses. Naruto trudged over to where the bodies lay in a sodden pile, the adrenaline high of battle worn off. Gaara followed him, his footsteps as soft and silent as a fox's tread.

Their eyes were open, and blood was still leaking from their torn bodies. Naruto knelt in the cooling puddles and reached out, closing the eyes of the ones closest to him with the palm of his hand before sitting back on his heels.

He felt almost nothing for them, nothing except a sadness at the stupid loss of life that weighed heavily on his bones. He didn't feel justified, or guilty, or regretful. He only felt empty, a void with nothing screaming through it like the wind howling over the plains.

"I don't like what I'm becoming," he said to the moon and the stars and Gaara, standing silently beside him, friend and confidante and comrade.

Gaara's hand landed on his shoulder, sand rasping against his dirty clothes. "You are becoming what we need you to become," Gaara said. "Yugito may lead us in battle, but you lead us in becoming a team."

"And if that changes me? If it changes my…" he trailed off, struggling for a word.

"If that changes your nature?" Gaara offered.

"Yeah."

"Then it does, and you will have to learn to live with it," he said, implacable and unmoving as stone. Naruto let his head fall forward, eyes closing against the burn of tears as he took a deep breath.

He smelled death. The deaths of twelve genin, the ripples of their lost lives stretching on into infinity, siblings and parents and friends all dying in their own secret, solitary ways.

Hoof beats sounded behind him, and he stood, turning from the pile of twisted limbs and glassy eyes lying open to the stars. Shinobu was on a rotund brown horse, Yugito on the gray gelding that had wounded her. Gaara put his foot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle of a yellow-brown mare. Katashi was sitting uncomfortably on a chestnut mare, and Varg and Moriko sat atop a giant black gelding, almost twice the size of Shinobu's mount. The other six horses milled around behind them, their lead ropes tied to Shinobu's saddle.

Naruto scrambled on top of a black-flecked gray horse, settling in the saddle. The horse flicked an ear at him, making him flinch. '_Okay. So I'm in the saddle. Now what?_' He glanced at Yugito, and clumsily copied the way she held her reins.

Yugito twisted in the saddle, staring at them. Her expression grew more forbidding with each glance.

"Let me guess," she drawled. "None of you have ever ridden a horse before."

The jinchuuriki made little noises of embarrassed assent. Yugito rolled her eyes skyward, muttering a prayer for patience, and said,

"Just go up and down when the horse does," before spurring her horse into a trot. The other horses immediately broke into the same gait. Naruto glanced over at Gaara, who had a long-suffering expression of resignation, and faced forward.

He felt his teeth clicking together as he bounced up and down, wincing every time he slammed into the saddle. '_Well, if the bouncing up and down doesn't kill me, the pain should._'

* * *

Traveling with the jinchuuriki had definitely been an… _experience_, Shinobu reflected. They had made camp in the lee of a hill as dawn broke, the others settling easily into pre-defined roles. It had been amazing to watch. Katashi produced a water source, Gaara enforced the perimeter, Naruto and his clones brought fuel for a smokeless fire, Yugito started the fire and cooked, and Varg cared for Moriko.

Shinobu resettled her glasses on her nose and warmed her hands by the fire. Her entire body ached, her unused muscles pounded to a pulp by the relentless trotting. Exhaustion weighed on her like a thick blanket. Even the Hachibi was silent, its eight voices strangled into submission by weariness.

Varg was already asleep, having wolfed down his soup and crawled into his bedroll. Moriko was asleep on his chest, the skin scarred with the black whirls of his seal. '_It's amazing how he functions._' Most psychologists would have classified him as suffering from a delusional disorder, or possibly something on the autism spectrum. But he _was_ in there, and did attach feelings to the people around him, especially Moriko. He obviously comprehended the world around him, and understood direct orders, but his personality was buried so deeply under the pressure of nineteen years of isolation that it was unlikely that he would ever recover.

'_A psychologist would have a field day with them,_' she grinned. Gaara showed signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, only taken to an extreme that no credible scientist had ever believed could occur. To see yourself as the only thing of worth in the entire world, and to consign the entire human race as lower than dogs… it was astounding.

Yugito, vicious and tormented and hateful, would have been a textbook case of Antisocial Personality Disorder. She displayed the recklessness, the aggressiveness, the lack of remorse. She would have been a wonderful case study of a sociopath… except for the care she showed the other jinchuuriki, her overpowering urge to protect them. '_A murderer and a martyr._'

Katashi and Naruto were surprisingly normal, two kids that brawled and punched each other and shouted like boys do. The pressure of being jinchuuriki seemed to have little effect on them.

Naruto… She turned to where he was sprawled on his back on the other side of the fire. His eyes flickered red in the light. How he had affected the other jinchuuriki was something that was almost scientifically impossible to quantify. To remediate Gaara's personality disorders, to instill a sense of protectiveness in Yugito, to draw Katashi out of his shell… any clinical medic-nin would kill for his ability.

Shinobu flopped onto her back, not caring about her pristine white lab coat. The thing was utterly destroyed, anyway. The stars whirled overhead, and she stared at them with fierce intent, burning them onto her retinas.

It was as if this was all a dream, and could vanish like smoke at any moment. Leaving the hospital, traveling on the open road, making friends, being able to talk and laugh without getting chastised for it, being seen as a person instead of a deus ex machina, there to save the people that no one else could…

It was incredible. And even her soreness, her lack of stamina, her inexperience couldn't change that.

She thought of the girl she had left alive and lied to Yugito about. '_I had to,_' she rationalized. Varg had only caused traumatic brain injury- well, not that was anything to sneeze at, but she had been able to stabilize the girl in the hopes that a patrol would find her- instead of killing her, and… there had been enough death already.

Kusa was small, their shinobi forces new, and to lose eleven of their genin in one fell swoop would be a stunning blow.

She doubted the girl would ever be a shinobi again. The guilt of surviving when all others had died could break a person more surely than any steel.

"Hey, Shinobu!" Naruto called.

"Just so you're aware, I'm not going to sit up for anything less than full hemorrhaging," she informed him.

"Whatever that is," Katashi said.

"It's when you-"

"Okay, okay!" Naruto yelled to the open sky, holding his hands out in surrender. Shinobu giggled.

"Well, I was thinking-" and Naruto was off, babbling about food and jutsus and Konoha, his voice aching every time he mentioned his village, a conversation sparking from nothing.

Yes, she thought, rolling onto her side to join the fun, she wouldn't have traded any of those long seventeen years as jinchuuriki, if they meant that she had friends like these.

* * *

The jinchuuriki had settled into a rhythm as they struggled up the mountain paths. Katashi spat blood every few minutes, his teeth lacerating his mouth; Yugito coughed up bits of her esophageal lining onto the ground, leaving spots, wet and red and humming with black chakra; Varg hummed tunelessly, rocking Moriko back and forth, bearded face complacent; Gaara trudged resignedly in front of Naruto, insulated by his layers of sand; Naruto was practicing his Raikyu with his free hand, his other hand gripping his horse's lead rope.

The drive Naruto had to succeed was amazing, Shinobu thought as she turned, looking behind at the six horses tied to hers. Rocks turned underneath her feet, the high gray walls of the canyon rising like the bones of the earth on either side.

A cold wind howled down through the canyon, shrieking like a patient underneath the scalpel without anesthesia, its cold and bitter assault cutting through her clothes like a knife.

"I see the end up ahead," Yugito called from the front of the line. Katashi hacked up another ball of blood and saliva, spattering the wall with it.

"Great!" Naruto said as he let the Raikyu disappear, struggling with his horse as it planted its hooves and refused to go. "Come on, you mangy beast, don't you want- whatever it is you eat? They've got it in Iwa!" The horse was not amused.

Shinobu hid a smile behind her hand, hurrying up beside the horse and slapping it on the rump. It squealed and started moving again, grumbling with every step.

"Ew!" Katashi howled. "Ew ew ew!" He was leaping around, shaking his foot. "I stepped in horse crap! This is so ick-" he paused, glaring daggers at Naruto, who was laughing hysterically. "And you! Shut _up_."

"How about you _all_ shut your gaping jaws before I remove them from your bodies," Yugito said flatly, turning her head to stare at them over her shoulder.

"I concur," Gaara muttered from his shell of sand.

"You guys don't have a fun bone in your bodies," Naruto said.

"There is no such bone," Gaara said, taking it completely literally- again.

"Actually," Shinobu yelled over the wind, "there is!" Gaara turned to her in silent question.

"The humerus," she said, grinning. Gaara's expression was blank. She tried again. "It's a pun? It's supposed to be funny- never mind." They trudged on for another minute in silence, the clatter of rocks and the shrieking of the wind the only noise.

"_Ohhh…_" Katashi said with dawning realization, "I get it!" Naruto let his head drop into his hands, mumbling something about 'idiots'.

"Here," Yugito gritted out, obviously on her last nerve. "That is Iwagakure, the Village Hidden in Stone."

The village was spread out beneath them like the hub of a wheel, a patchwork quilt of stubbled fields radiating out around the walls. Cairns of boulders that stretched up into the sky were dotted everywhere, colorful flags flapping in the breezes.

Shinobu squinted, head aching as she tried too hard to make out the village.

"Look!" Katashi called, pointing. "There's a huge monument there." She blinked, rubbed at her eyes, and asked,

"Can you describe it to me?"

"It's like a big tower, and it's got a carved person on the top, looking sad. They're in robes of some sort, and they're looking down."

"That's the sepulcher," she said. "They call it the Tower."

"Oh," Gaara said, understanding. "The bones of shinobi that died in the Third Great War are buried there. It's a memorial. The person in robes is the personification of Iwa."

"Enough chatter. Let's get moving," Yugito said.

After what seemed like an eternity of stumbling down steep rock-strewn paths with the wind screaming wordless accusations, they hit the level plain where the fields stretched out beside them. The stubble lay sleeping, lined with frost, black crows picking over the leftovers.

'_Like birds on a corpse._'

The cairns were everywhere, the small shrines to familial ancestors slick with condensation, the flags snapping like bones under the weight of a boulder. The sky was gray with the oncoming storm, and lightning rumbled with every breath Varg took. The horses shied behind her, their breaths puffing out white and misty in the cold air.

The walls rose up before them, built of gray rocks slapped together with muddy mortar. The two shinobi at the gates cast a disinterested eye at them.

"Business?" one droned.

"We're horse traders," Yugito said.

"Very well," the guard said. "Go on in." The other guard, silent, watched them go, the force of his gaze burning a hole through her back as they went through the gates.

They found the horse market easily enough; all they'd had to do was follow what Katashi called the 'crap-stink.' Horses milled about, being poked and prodded by buyers. Pickpockets weaved through the crowd, food merchants hawking their wares from the sidelines.

"That man over there," Katashi said, pointing. "He's wearing expensive clothes, but his hair's dirty and his teeth are all screwed up. So he's trying to _look_ rich, but he's not, which means he's shady, which means that we can sell the horses to him and he won't ask where they came from."

"You sure?" Naruto asked.

"Of course I'm sure!" Katashi looked offended. "I'm the only one of us here who's lived on the streets. He's shady enough to take the deal."

"All of you stay here. Katashi, come with me," Yugito said, gathering the lead ropes into her hands. The horses followed docilely as she pulled them over to the man, who brightened and started jabbering in some sort of gutter argot. Katashi translated, the man frowning, as he was unable to understand Katashi's slurred speech.

They went a few more rounds, Yugito stroking her kusarigama in an attempt to hurry the transaction. Finally the man threw his hands up in the air and fished out a wad of bills, shoving them at Yugito. She handed them to Katashi, who counted them, fingers flickering, and nodded. Yugito grinned toothily and came back to them, dragging Katashi with her.

"We got a thousand for each. He may have been shady, but he knew good horses when he saw them." She nudged Katashi with her elbow. The younger boy sulked, but handed over the wad of bills to Gaara, who secreted them away in his pack.

"Good," Gaara grunted. "We're set until we reach the Village of Shadows."

"Guys…" Naruto said, tensing. Yugito's lip twitched.

"Do nothing," she muttered as ANBU, masks slick with drizzle, surrounded them, hands resting in obvious threat on their swords.

"Damn it," Yugito whispered in self-recrimination. "I got distracted."

"You are the jinchuuriki, are you not?" one of the ANBU said, his Iwa accent thick.

"What's it to you?" Naruto said, lifting his chin. It looked ridiculous on a barely five-foot teenager, but he didn't seem to notice. The ANBU shifted, the crowd in the market rustling, their eyes fixed on the confrontation in their midst.

"Our Kage wants to see you," the leader said. "You will not be harmed."

"How'd you know we were coming?" Naruto pressed.

"The sole living Kusa genin," the leader said. "She told us everything-" his voice was dark, "-after a judicious application of pain."

Shinobu felt Yugito's searing gaze on her back, and didn't lift her head to meet her gaze. '_I saved her… only for her to be tortured._'

"You will come with us." The leader said.

"Now," another added. There was obviously no room for argument. Yugito's shoulders trembled with anger, but she straightened, nodding regally.

"Very well."

* * *

A/N: All questions should go into the forum in my profile. Reviews are loved and fed little biscotti cookies. 


	15. Chapter 15

_Under a windowsill_

_They all were found_

_A touch of concrete within the doorway_

_Without a sound_

- 'Save Me' by Shinedown

* * *

The seven jinchuuriki were shepherded through the crowds and to a tall, stone building, covered with moss and dark with rain. Warm light glinted cheerfully from inside and from the glass lanterns swinging on the streets. 

'_Just once, can we have this go off without a hitch?_' Naruto thought, glancing at the masked faces of the ANBU. One of them opened the imposing front door and ushered them in. Shinobi were rushing back and forth, carrying folders and test tube vials and other science things, their faces pinched with harassment and frustration. They were dressed in different clothes than the shinobi of Konoha: thick wools and muted grays and browns featured prominently. Naruto watched them go, confused.

"Iwa is renowned for their prowess in science," Gaara said softly into his ear. "Most of the scientific discoveries of the last century have come from Iwa, including the first diagrams of the chakra circulatory system." Naruto nodded in acknowledgement, looking around again.

A few of the lazier Chuunin leaned in the corners, inspecting their nails and fluffing their hair. '_Just like Konoha._' The homesickness beat on his heart like a hammer.

One of the Chuunin caught sight of them and skidded to a stop, papers falling from limp fingers, her eyes wide with all-consuming fear. Naruto frowned, looking at Gaara, who shrugged minutely. Yeah, having seven people walking into the atrium escorted by ANBU wasn't an everyday occurrence, but still-

Wait. She wasn't looking at them.

She was looking at _him._

"The Yellow Flash," the woman breathed, hatred twisting her pretty face into something unrecognizable. "You- you killed-"

"Oh, come on," one of the men called out, "it's just a ki-" A chair clattered as he leaped to his feet, pointing a trembling finger. "Holy _shit_." Chuunin by Chuunin, the room fell silent, and Naruto was the very uncomfortable focus of fifty pairs of staring eyes, full of hatred and fear.

It was too much like his childhood, in a way, and he had to get away, had to do _something_ to stop those staring, hateful eyes.

"Uh…" Naruto said, searching for something to say. He wasn't the Yellow Flash; the Yondaime had died twelve years ago in blood and pain and fire, a martyr for his village and his country. A hero whose name would live forever, but certainly not powerful enough to survive the sealing jutsu. He looked around at his companions, grinning helplessly at the stupidity of the situation.

'_And if I was the Yellow Flash, I'm pretty sure I'd know._' Shinobu met his gaze, then hunched her shoulders and folded into herself like a kicked puppy.

"Let's get going," one of the ANBU said, his voice tense as he grabbed Naruto's shoulder, fingers like steel bands, and steered him through the gaping crowd and up the sweeping stairway in the back. The female Chuunin's eyes followed him all the way.

The other ANBU peeled off, until there were only two left: the one with his hand on Naruto's shoulder and the one at the back, pushing Katashi whenever he thought that the Isonade jinchuuriki was moving too slow for his taste. Naruto turned his head just enough to see Yugito, raising his eyebrows in question. '_Pleaasse say we can kill them and get out of here._'

Yugito shook her head. Blowing out a long sigh, Naruto turned and faced forward again. '_Great. This is just how I wanted to spend my day._' The ANBU dragged them down a long hallway- apparently the news of their arrival had spread, because shinobi were sticking their heads out of doorways to see them pass, only to duck back inside when they saw Naruto- the walls decorated with thick, colorful tapestries to keep out the cold.

The ANBU released Naruto to knock on the door. Naruto rubbed at his shoulder resentfully.

"Geez, bruise my shoulder all to hell, why don't you?" he muttered. "Asshole." The ANBU ignored him, calling through the doorway,

"We have the jinchuuriki, Tsuchikage-sama." There was a long bit of shuffling noises and papers being filed before the answer came back in a old, tired voice.

"Bring them in."

The ANBU opened the heavy wooden door and motioned them inside. The Tsuchikage was an old woman, her eyes glinting beetle-black from beneath the pointed end of her brown-and-white headdress. Her brown hands resembled spiders' legs as she twirled a pen thoughtfully between her fingers, considering them. Scientific charts and graphs were everywhere, all relating to 'Subject A'. Slices of brains and livers rested on the high shelves. '_Ew. Definitely ew._'

"You may go," the Tsuchikage said, her voice crackling with age. The two ANBU bowed and backed from the room, the door clicking shut softly behind him.

"I didn't know Iwa's Bane had a son," the old woman said. Naruto broke free of Gaara's restraining hold and stomped forward, sticking his jaw out.

"Okay, first of all, I'm _not _related to the Yellow Flash, and secondly, what's with dragging us all the way across the village for no reason at all? I mean, I guess you have your reasons, but I'm pretty sure that they don't line up with ours!"

He shut up, suddenly realizing that he was mouthing off to a _Kage_. And it wasn't like this woman was like Sarutobi, who had played games with him when he was younger and aching for a friend; her eyes were as hard as the rocks beneath their feet.

'_I really need to learn to think before I speak,_' he thought for what might have been the hundredth time. He heard the others milling around behind him in irritation, and could picture Gaara and Yugito's expressions of put-upon annoyance in his head. He was definitely going to get chewed out for this.

"You're lucky I'm in a good mood," the Tsuchikage said, picking idly at her fingernails with her pen. "Otherwise I might order your execution. The civilians would be all-too-happy to see someone who looks so much like Iwa's Bane being executed." Her smile was as sharp as a knife blade. "Emotional catharsis, you understand."

"Uh… no."

"Never mind." The old woman leaned forward, meeting his eyes. Naruto had to fight the urge to giggle hysterically at the mental image of the Tsuchikage talking to a twelve-year-old missing-nin from Konoha like he was actually somebody. It was hard going, and a muffled yelp of manic laughter squeaked through his lips. The Tsuchikage frowned.

"You are the jinchuuriki, obviously. Your physical differences are proof of that. I hope you realize how lucky you've been, so far."

"Huh?"

The Tsuchikage fished out a bingo book, flicking it across the table at him. "The newest edition; just came out yesterday." Naruto caught it, opened the crisp black covers, and stared down at the index.

'_Shit._'

The others gathered around him, Katashi jumping up and down to see over Gaara's shoulder. He turned to the back of the book, and there they were, all seven of their pictures splashed across the pages in full color.

"Aw, sweet! They put me down as S-class!" Katashi piped up, only to squawk and shut up as Yugito cuffed him on the back of the head. '_I guess our days of sneaking into villages disguised as horse traders are over. Fucking great._'

"You'll need passes, signed by a Kage, to go anywhere now, not to mention some heavy-duty genjutsu." The Tsuchikage stood with a quiet groan, all rickety angles, her hands gnarled like knots in the bark of a tree, and came out from behind the desk. "It is good that you've arrived."

"Why's that?" he asked mulishly, folding his arms across his chest. Shinobu took the bingo book, looking through it. The Tsuchikage met his gaze, looking amused and superior all at once. '_I want to smack her._'

"Because the subject has lost her usefulness to us. Therefore, it would be advantageous for us to let you have her."

"The-" he echoed, feeling as if someone had reached down his throat and dragged his heart back out. "That's what you call her? '_The subject?_' What's _wrong_ with you, you withered old _bitch?!_" He would have flown at her in a flurry of fists and screams if not for Gaara's hand on his shoulder, a silent warning. "She's not an_animal_, there for you to poke at or whatever the hell it is you people do in the name of fucking _science!_ She's a _human being!_" He heard Yugito stir in disagreement, but the older jinchuuriki subsided, saying nothing.

The Tsuchikage bore his rage without flinching, only raising a bored eyebrow. "Human? I think not."

"Oh, really?"

The Tsuchikage rolled her eyes at his comeback- well, it was a stupid one, but he was working under pressure- and bit out,

"Do you want her or not?"

"Yes," Gaara said, stepping in. He glanced at Naruto, the look in his green eyes communicating the sentiment of '_Shut up before you get us all killed_' rather effectively. Naruto shut up. The Tsuchikage smiled, her grin full of teeth almost rivaling Katashi's.

"Good. Follow me."

She led them out of the office and down another hallway, then down some more stairs, and took two or three turns- the place was a labyrinth- before they descended into a stone tunnel. The arched ceiling was low and dripping with cold groundwater, and Varg grumbled as he was forced to hunch over and scramble after them.

"The catacombs of Iwagakure are famous," Gaara said in Naruto's ear, like he was some sort of tour guide or something. "A long time ago, a plague decimated the city. They were forced to carve out the catacombs to find a place to bury the bodies." The air was thick with a musty smell, like old scrolls or ramen gone bad, and their breath steamed in the frigid surroundings.

"The subject is our first jinchuuriki, so we've been studying it since the sealing." the Tsuchikage said from up ahead, her voice echoing eerily down the hallways. "The Shichibi is known to be the most cunning of the demons, but unfortunately that intelligence destroyed our hopes of using subject A in warfare."

"What do you mean?" Shinobu asked.

"The sealing was performed when subject A was two hours old. The Shichibi forced the subject's brain into maturity before we were ready, and destroyed most of our hopes. Subject A processes sensory information at an incredible rate, and has eidetic memory. Unfortunately, it is hypersensitive and suffers from seizures, where the connections between synapses are overloaded with too much stimulation. Too much sound, movement, or light causes these seizures, and with each successive seizure, the chances of permanent brain damage and death grows."

The Tsuchikage pulled out a ring of keys and unlocked a heavy steel door, pulling it open with a grunt. The seven jinchuuriki stepped into darkness.

The huge, dimly-lit room was painted a dark gray, and Naruto felt the insane urge to do something to break up the monotony. Shinobu was looking with interest at a tray of shiny instruments, her fingers twitching with the urge to steal them. The hum of distant air conditioners filled the room. Medic-nins, dressed from head to toe in white scrubs, hurried to and fro, all circulating around a steel table in the middle of the room.

"Let Riko down," the Tsuchikage called out, her voice ringing loudly in the quiet. "The ones we've been waiting for have arrived."

The medic-nins parted, one of them undoing the straps holding the girl to the table. She was small and dirty and unsmiling, and exuded such a sense of menace that it was a wonder the Tsuchikage didn't tremble. Her brown hair- marred with a white stripe like a badger's on the left side- was cut short, and a long scar slashed across her face and across her nose, the scar just as white as the shirt and trousers she was dressed in.

"Hi, Riko," Naruto said, grinning at her as she slipped off the table. She returned his gaze with consideration- there was nothing childlike in those amber eyes- before ghosting across the room to stand beside Gaara, a pained little adult in miniature. Gaara stared down at her, blinking, but finally shrugged, dismissing her.

"I see you two are going to get along just fine," the Tsuchikage said in a creepy imitation of a mother, "so let's discuss the deal." She jerked her head at Riko, then held up seven official-looking forms. "You all get the subject, and these passes- signed by me- in return for him."

Naruto swallowed as a rough hand closed with a vise-like grip on his upper arm. '_Joy. Just what I needed._' He glanced behind him, meeting the eyes of the female Chuunin that had seemed so angry at him. She smiled at him. It wasn't comforting at all.

"You didn't think we'd let the son of Iwa's Bane escape, did you?" she said in a harsh whisper.

"Uh… is this because I mouthed off to you?" he asked the Tsuchikage.

She shrugged, her eyes gleaming in the dimness. "No, we would have kept you anyway." A flash of teeth in the gloom, "But it didn't hurt."

The Chuunin spun Naruto around roughly, and Naruto saw why the other jinchuuriki hadn't come to his aid. ANBU were crowded all around them, bristling with swords and kunai, one with a wickedly serrated blade resting on Varg's throat. Katashi was pale, his neck pinned in the crook of another ANBU's elbow, ready to be snapped.

'_Then I guess I've got no choice. The mission will continue, with or without me, and that's all I can ask for._'

"Okay," he said. Shinobu made a choked sound of protest, but quieted when he lifted a hand to stop any more complaints.

"Let Riko go and give them the passes, and I'll go with you."

"Good. I knew you'd see it our way," the Tsuchikage said. Naruto met Katashi's eyes, watched Katashi's lips twitch into something resembling a smile. The kid could do it, and if he couldn't- well, he'd die trying. The ANBU prodded the other seven jinchuuriki into turning, and he watched their backs disappear into the musty tunnel.

Someone slipped a black bag over his head, and he swallowed, his stomach twisting in on itself as he was pushed forward, stumbling at the rough handling.

'_Hurry._'

* * *

Touji spat tobacco juice into the spittoon, watching as the other prisoners jostled and shoved each other for a chance to peer into the solitary confinement cell. The cell block for shinobi was full of men and women who had been accused of war crimes, of murder, of being too fucked up to work in the world and too valuable to liquidate. Like him. He had killed the rest of his platoon in the war, but he was the last scion of a clan renowned for their strength, making him too useful to execute. He smiled, prodding at his missing teeth, and stood, unfolding to his full height. 

The low ceiling of the open room scraped his head as he moved, the gray cinderblocks leeching all the warmth from his raggedly clothed body. Towering over the other shinobi, he waded through the crowd, the smaller ones skittering backwards like cockroaches under light to escape from his gaze.

"What's going on?"

Maya shrugged, running fingers through her short, gray hair. The scar that stretched across her mouth and up to her ears like a second smile flexed as she rasped,

"Some kid got brought in. Apparently he's the son of Iwa's Bane." A muscle jumped in her square jaw, the scar given to her by the man called Yondaime rippling like a snake as she gazed into the small cell with feverishly bright eyes. "Looks just like him." Her tongue slipped out and left her lips with a thin glaze of saliva. She looked like a wolf that had just seen a weakened deer.

"Really?" Touji bent, peering inside the tiny five-by-six cell. A boy sat in the shaft of moonlight, his blond hair turned silver by the light. His eyes- ah, they were the eyes of Iwa's Bane, the last thing that so many of their shinobi had seen in this world. He was dressed in dusty black clothes, and he shivered like a man close to freezing to death.

The air was loud with the gibbering of the shinobi behind him, pressing at the walls, baying for the blood of Iwa's Bane. Their high-pitched howls rang off the cinderblocks, echoed, all pleading for Touji to destroy the door, to rip it from its hinges and let them in. The boy flinched, turned his head and met Touji's eyes.

He looked… innocent. He looked pathetic. And he was the son of Iwa's Bane, and that was enough, in Iwa, to make the entire country call for his execution.

And if Touji let the masses behind him in… he grinned. They would owe him. And if they owed him, if they pledged him loyalty- with a hundred shinobi at his back, he could break out, and there would be no limit to what he could do. He turned, gazed out at the sea of upturned, scarred faces, the wide eyes brimming with lust for blood, and roared,

"You want in?"

"Yes!" rang off the walls like the tolling of a bell.

"You want to rend him limb from limb?"

A wordless thunder of approval.

"And what will you give me for the blood of the boy?"

A pause, before Maya screamed, "Our allegiance!" A hundred throats took up the cry, the noise swelling to an earthquake, the ground shaking under his feet. Touji grinned, turned, and curled his fingers around the bars in the door.

"Sorry, kid," he said through the window. He frowned, insulted when the boy didn't even plead for his life. Instead, the kid was hunched over, grabbing his belly, rambling like a madman,

"No- no- no, I'm not letting you out- you can't come out- I don't want to die- I don't want to die-"

"Hey, kid! I'm about to let a hundred slavering shinobi in, and all you're doing is-" Touji quieted as the boy did, the boy's head lifting. The kid stared at the moon for a long moment, and finally said,

"And if I let you have them- if I let you kill them to keep us alive- you'll let me take over again? In return for their lives, you'll go back in the seal when they're all dead?" Touji felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, a pervading sense of _wrongness,_ of _get the fuck away now_ squirming in his throat.

The shadow cast in the moonlight by the kid was changing, was shifting, three stripes of blackness twisting like snakes in the moonlight, in and out and over each other.

"What's wrong?" Maya asked. "Just open the damn door!"

"Shut up!" he snapped, but did as she said anyway, visions of himself at the head of a mercenary band filling his head as he pulled, feeling the hinges creak, give way under his strength.

"Pretending to be insane isn't going to help you; you're locked up in here with us and no place else to go."

The kid was saying something again.

"Then it's a deal."

Touji finished pulling the door free and flung it back against the wall, the loud clatter ringing through the air. He ducked, stepped into the cell, paused as the boy turned.

A low noise was throbbing inside him like the beating of his heart, the very air itself shaking, thundering as the boy's lips peeled back like a wolf's, exposing teeth that gleamed white-silver in the moonlight, curved, wicked, jagged, nothing like human teeth. Chakra, so dark a blood-red that it seemed black, flamed on the boy's skin, flickering in a nonexistent wind, and heat was pouring from the chakra, so hot that the skin of his hands blistered as he was shoved forward by the people behind him.

He braced, dug his heels into the floor. The boy- not the boy, something else, something unimaginably old and unrepentantly evil and gone insane so long ago that no sane thought would ever pass through those ruby eyes again- tilted its head, raised fingers tipped with black serrated claws that tapped restlessly against each other, a sound, high-pitched, weirdly sweet, like the tolling of funeral bells, joining the cacophony with each tap.

Pointed ears made out of chakra swiveled, flattened, three tails lashing at the walls, the concrete dripping like water with each touch. The beast stepped forward on bent-back knees, claws ringing against stone as it fell forward onto hands and knees, tails drifting in the air, flickering across Maya's face- she stumbled backward, screaming, burnt strips of flesh falling between her fingers- as the beast took a step forward, two, three. Three of the other shinobi rushed around him, sped forward- the blood-black chakra flared, the three of them pushing against it, poised- and were flung into the melting concrete, their skulls collapsing in on themselves like wet cardboard.

Touji felt tears boiling on his skin, couldn't remember when he had started to cry from the terror.

The beast spoke in a voice that made blood run from his ears, the veins in his hands burst apart, hands swelling and purpling-

"_Wrong._" Its tongue lolled from gaping jaws as it raised scythe-like claws. "I'm not locked up in here with you. _You're_ locked up in here with _me_."

And it launched itself into the air in a flash of black and red, and the last things Touji saw in the world were ruby eyes and teeth that shone mercury-bright in the moonlight.

People were screaming. His head landed on the floor, and he closed his eyes.

* * *

Katashi peered over the edge of the rooftop, his third eyelids sliding across his eyes to keep the smoke from stinging his eyes. The oil lamps attached to the stone buildings didn't put off as much smoke as the wet torches of home, but the smoke still stung when it got in his eyes. 

Home. It seemed silly to think of Kiri as home; it had stopped being home after Rei died. And anyway, home now was wherever the other jinchuuriki were. He grinned, winced as the motion made his new teeth cut even deeper into his gums, one of the old ones wiggling ominously. '_Damn it._' He'd just lost three teeth last week!

The two guards in the alley below turned the corner. Katashi glanced around for any puddles, muttered a curse that Rei would have slapped him for when there weren't any. '_Great. So now I get to try and break into a prison without any water to help, and I've got to do it before sunrise. Not to mention the others are back at camp trying to keep that Riko girl from spazzing out and dying of seizures or something, so they can't help me._'

He bent his knees, and with a short burst of chakra, leaped across the alleyway and landed on the outside of the wall around the prison, layering chakra on his hands and bare feet to keep from falling. '_I really should learn how to walk up walls with shoes on._' A searchlight came on, humming in the silence, the white beam sweeping across the grounds below him. He pressed closer to the wall, hardly breathing, until the light panned away.

Scuttling up and over the wall, he dropped into the central courtyard, tucking himself into a ball and rolling into the shadows. Gravel crunched underfoot, making him freeze.

'_What-_'

The stench of blood filled the air, almost smothering in its thickness, and he looked up. A tiny window was above him, barred. Blood was dripping down the concrete wall, black in the moonlight, too much blood to come from one person. '_It can't be Naruto's blood. He's Naruto; nobody can beat him._'

Inching his way up the wall, he turned, peered inside. It was a small cell, but he could see into the room beyond. Bile rose in his throat. And if he- who was from _Kiri_, the village that prided itself on gory training, who had killed over twenty people already- was sick…

The walls looked like some insane artist had splashed red paint all over them and left it there, still wet, the colors changing from the black-red of the arteries to the paler reds of veins. The concrete had melted in some places like fire had scorched the place, and there were bodies everywhere. Not even bodies, anymore; not even human. Reduced to lumps of flesh and bone, steaming organs splattered everywhere.

"Naruto?" he called softly into the red-stained darkness. He blinked, jerked away as Naruto suddenly appeared before him, fingers curling around the bars.

"Katashi?" Naruto rasped. His voice was weak, his hair knotted with drying blood, his face smeared with it. "I can't-" his voice broke as he held up his hands, showed the black claws that dripped shreds of flesh, "I can't make them go_ away_."

Katashi swallowed. He didn't know what to do. Naruto was always so confident, always had a plan, never gave in to the demons like he or Gaara or Yugito had. "It's okay." Except it wasn't, and he knew it and Naruto knew it and nothing was ever going to be okay again, because Naruto had just killed a hundred people. "I'm going to get you out of here."

He splayed his hands out against the wall, searched for the water that had seeped into cracks in the concrete like Gaara had told him to. '_There._' He closed his eyes, focused, swallowed the blood running down his throat as he pushed chakra into the water droplets, made them expand, the cracks widening, deepening. Beads of sweat rolled down his nose.

Katashi pulled his hands away, glared at the concrete. It looked cracked enough, if he was any judge, but he hadn't done this before.

"Back up," Naruto said, before summoning some clones. There was the sound of fists hitting the wall in unison, before the entire wall crumpled in a cloud of dust and chunks of concrete. Katashi coughed, third eyelids coming out again. Naruto came through the cloud, looking like a ghost, the dust sticking to his blood-soaked clothes and hair.

"Come on," Katashi said, offering a hand. "I'll take you back to the others." Naruto took his hand dazedly, seeming shocked by what had happened, and followed him as Katashi hurried him out of the village.

* * *

Pain watched as the outline of the illusionary Zetsu wavered like heat reflecting off metal. A mirage, he had heard the phenomena called, although he had never seen one in Amegakure. And he never would, until his plans came to fruition and the omnipresent black clouds finally departed his country. 

"You are sure of this?" he asked, tongue piercing clicking off the back of his teeth. Zetsu nodded, the white half hissing,

"Very. They are almost ready to depart Iwagakure and head south to Numagakure."

"I see. You are dismissed." The illusion faded away as Pain turned away, gazing out across the sloped roofs of his village, dark with rain. The air was full of the dripping of water, ceaselessly winding its way over stone and cloth to sink into the ground once more. The sound of the rain never ended; someone went insane from the monotony every week, giving into what the medic-nins hopelessly termed 'rain madness'. No one ever returned from it.

But he was Pain, and the rain did not bother him. It was merely an obstacle, something to be surmounted to achieve his goal. He descended the steps from the dais where his desk was, pausing.

Konan was leaning against the doorframe, folding a sheet of paper into a cunning replica of Zetsu.

"Another setback?"

"Yes." Pain reached down and twisted the stud in the webbing of his thumb and forefinger, the white-hot shoot of agony settling him, redirecting his anger. "They travel too quickly for us to assemble a team to take them out. The other teams are occupied with their own missions. I refuse to send Zetsu after them alone, as he has stated that in a group, they could defeat him."

"So we let them go?" Konan asked, the paper melding into her skin again. Pain watched it slither underneath her skin, reached out, entangled his fingers with hers, their black robes brushing against each other.

"We have already acquired spies in the other villages. It will be a simple matter to start pulling the necessary strings to force the other Kages to attack Konoha. I estimate that in six years, we will be able to launch a full-scale war. And once we do so, Konoha will be forced to ask the jinchuuriki for help, forcing the jinchuuriki into the open."

Konan stepped into him, a paper knife sliding from her palm, pricking the skin of his chin, pushing his head up. Pain bore it silently, amused at his tool's presumption. For she was his tool, and she knew it. She did not resent it- Konan did not have enough emotion in her to resent anyone- nor did she enjoy it. It simply was.

"And Madara? Will he tolerate another delay?"

Feet scraped on the floor as Pain glanced over. Madara's masked face loomed out of the darkness, his presence stifling, the air crackling with chakra. One of Madara's many talents, the ability to somehow melt from nowhere without being noticed.

"I have waited sixty-eight years for the rebirth of my clan," Madara ground out, his voice the sound of a man's dying whisper, a death rattle, a last breath in the throat; he was speaking with the voice of a boy that had died long ago, his body crushed into pulp. Only the insensate fury and unyielding will that Madara possessed kept his corpse moving. A red eye glinted from the darkness of the mask. "Another six will do no harm."

"Either way, the end will be the same. The descendants of the Hokages will answer for their crimes against my clan. Men are traitorous by nature. And_ nothing_ can change the nature of a man."

* * *

**Annotations**

"_Wrong. I'm not locked up in here with you. _You're_ locked up in here with _me." – A line spoken by Rorschach in Alan Moore's Watchmen.

* * *

**A/N:** Reviews are adored and hoarded like gold. Any questions should go into the forum linked in my profile. 


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N:** This chapter, like all the others, was betaed by AisCrim. Much of the Kyuubi's story was taken from Japanese mythology about kitsunes. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

_Will I wake up_

_Is it a dream I made up_

_No I guess it's reality_

_What will change us_

_Or will we mess up_

_Our only chance to connect_

_With a dream_

- 'Plowed' by Sponge

* * *

Katashi slung Naruto's arm over his shoulder as soon as they hit the ground outside the walls of Iwa, Naruto's legs buckling underneath him. The evil black claws on Naruto's hands were cutting through his shirt and into his shoulder, sharp pinpricks of pain radiating out. 

"Come on, the others are camped out just up ahead, we'll get there soon-" he babbled, meaningless, useless, Naruto so exhausted that his bloody head was hanging, small sobs whistling from his chattering mouth.

Naruto was trying so hard to move, his legs shoving against the ground as Katashi pulled him along, terrified that Naruto- _Naruto_, who never gave up and never laid down and always got out of the worst scrapes imaginable- was so weak. The wind was howling, the moonlight gone, and they stumbled through the bloodsoaked darkness for what seemed like ages, rocks clattering underfoot, the open plains stretching off into infinity to either side.

The air stunk of blood, and the wind was shrieking like a hurricane, something that sounded like a wounded dog howling. His breath clouded in the air, and he shivered, frost crunching with each step, the blood on his fingers freezing them together.

Katashi didn't know how long they'd been half-jogging, half-walking, but he had lost his breath long ago, and figured they had gone at least four miles. He rubbed at eyes sandy with exhaustion, blinked. The small light of the jinchuuriki's camp was a mile ahead and to the left, and he turned, sped up, the beacon that signaled family and food and sleep encouraging him.

"There it is," he wheezed, shouldering more of Naruto's weight. The older boy was at least twenty pounds heavier than he was, and he hated this so, so much. "God, you could stand to lose some weight, fatass," he continued, trying to fill the empty silence with words, with something like the insulting conversations that he and Naruto usually had.

They fell into the camp like idiots, Naruto's arm slipping off of Katashi's shoulder, Naruto himself crashing down into Varg's arms. Shinobu hurried over, helped Varg set Naruto down on a spare sleeping roll. Blood smeared the fabric.

"'s not my blood," Naruto slurred, reaching up, trying to bat away Shinobu's hands. She laid a hand on his forehead, muttered something, and grabbed a blanket, laying it over him.

"Well, if it's not your blood, then whose is it?" Shinobu asked, before she froze, gazing at the black claws that lay dark and threatening against the sheet. "What-" her voice was very small, "God, what have you _done_?"

"They tried to kill me," he said hoarsely, "I had to let Kyuubi out. I had to- don't you understand?" And his voice was rising into a wail of self-recrimination, silenced as Shinobu placed her finger on his lips, taking the sponge that Yugito handed to her and starting to clean off the blood caked on his skin.

Katashi flopped down beside the fire and glanced around, undoing the ties on his sword and laying it beside him as he spat blood into the fire. Riko was lying beside Gaara, his sand plugging her ears, a spare piece of cloth tied around her eyes. Her fingers were clenched in Gaara's shirt. She looked tiny and frail, dressed in white. Gaara was flipping through the folder of notes that the Tsuchikage had given them along with the passes, his expression growing steadily darker with each page. Yugito was standing beside Shinobu, gazing down at Naruto, while Varg and Moriko were already together in Varg's sleeping bag. Varg was… Katashi blinked. He was _humming_, something soft and sweet, something like the lullabies Rei had sung to him in her rough voice.

The memory of Rei was like a kick to the gut.

Gaara stopped turning the pages and went completely still. Katashi glanced at him. The green eyes were slits of fury, his fingers white-knuckled on the pages.

"Pages after pages of this _shit_," Gaara grated out- that was the first time Katashi had ever heard him swear, which meant that he was really, really, _really_ mad- flinging the papers into the fire with a flick of his wrist. "Page after page of 'The subject exhibited a pain response and attempted to move away'. But not once do they ever say, '_We hurt her'_."

Riko stirred, her fingers clenching and relaxing. Gaara stared down at her, a look- not really a look, since he didn't have anywhere near enough expression for that- of confusion plastered on his face. He tried to remove her fingers from his shirt, only to stop as the earth rumbled a warning. Resigned, he let her stay, but he definitely wasn't happy about it. Well, Katashi was confused, too, to be honest: why Riko would attach herself to Gaara, who had all the emotions of a rock, no one knew. Riko had just insisted on staying by him.

The earth subsided, and Riko slept on. '_At least she didn't have a seizure_.' She had seized twice already, and they were scary. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her arms and legs pulling in on her, her back arching, and foam leaked from her mouth. They had tried to immobilize her, but Shinobu had said that it wasn't a good idea.

He glanced over at Shinobu, who sat back on her heels, throwing the bloody sponge in her pack. She smiled at Naruto, picking up his hands.

"Well, at least you got the claws to go away," she said in a pitiful attempt at comfort.

"Yeah, but now-" Naruto pulled his shirt up, wincing. Katashi leaned back on his hands to see. The seal on Naruto's belly was bleeding, drops of red blood oozing from the black lines, staining his black shirt even further. Shinobu made a noise of surprise and leaned closer, inspecting it.

"Well, there aren't any gashes, abrasions, et cetera, so the bleeding must be demonic in origin. I think that it's probably a byproduct of the Kyuubi's seal weakening, which it had to do so you could transform like you did. And if that's the case…" she bit her lip, the firelight gleaming on her glasses, "then it's not going to go away. I can wrap your abdomen if you like?"

"Yeah, I would. Thanks." Naruto struggled to sit up, only for Yugito to catch him underneath his arms and lift him into a sitting position. Katashi watched as Shinobu wrapped Naruto's stomach with white bandages before turning back and dragging his sleeping roll over.

His eyelids felt like they were weighted down with lead, like the diving belts that the shinobi of Kiri wore when they had to go really deep really fast, and his bed was so warm…

He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

* * *

Naruto opened his eyes, coughing out the water filling his mouth as he struggled upright. The dark water of the Kyuubi's prison was lapping at his thighs, cold and clinging, and the pipes that ran in and out of the walls were rumbling ominously. 

He sloshed through the water towards the black gates, sliding to a stop. '_Shit. That is so not good_.' The white seal that bound the gates shut had a tear in it, the inked kanji faded. He swallowed. '_Guess that explains the bleeding stomach and everything. I should have thought the whole 'letting Kyuubi out' thing through better._'

"If you hadn't done so, we would have died." The Kyuubi's voice thundered off the walls, deep and dark like a crevasse, the burning red eyes appearing in the darkness. The kitsune loomed over him, a mountain of violent sins, teeth shining silver, black claws scraping idly at the earth. It seemed particularly restless tonight, its tails lashing back and forth, chakra as fearsome as a forest fire weaving around the bars.

"I guess," he said, his voice terribly small next to the fox's harsh rumble. "I just… I didn't know that people could be so cruel. I mean, we've gotten eight jinchuuriki, counting me, and all of them got treated like crap. I was hoping that _one_ of them might have been happy."

The Kyuubi laughed, but it was completely without humor. "You were surprised? You naïve little _idiot_. Men are all cruel."

"No, they're not!" Naruto retorted. "There are nice ones, like Iruka-sensei and Jiraiya. It's only the stupid ones that are like that."

The Kyuubi snorted, superior. "Mankind is cruel and petty by nature, and it was their cruelty that gave birth to me."

'_What?_' It was hard to breathe, all of a sudden; the idea that men could be blamed for the Kyuubi seemed to be too much to take in, to process. '_It's lying. It's a kitsune; they lie, that's what they do_.' But the Kyuubi seemed so serious, so intent, and it had never acted like that before.

The fear was like a weight on his chest as he squeaked out, "What do you mean?"

The fox tilted its head in amusement before lying down, the water lapping at Naruto's legs as the earth shook under Kyuubi's weight. "You wish to know, little weakling?" The burning eyes narrowed cruelly. "Then you shall." Its tongue, redder than blood, flickered out, the inside of Kyuubi's mouth glowing white-hot with chakra like the middle of a forge.

"There are many kitsune," the Kyuubi began, "but only one Kyuubi; many tanuki, but only one Shukaku; many sharks, but only one Isonade. Why might that be?"

Naruto blinked, looked down, scratching at the back of his head. He didn't know why the Kyuubi asked him; it wasn't like he knew anything about demons or history!

"Why ask me? I don't know."

The Kyuubi answered simply, "We of the tails are not elemental forces, created when the world was; we are not creatures of the earth, loved by nature. We are made by man's cruelty, by man's injustice. The monk that became Shukaku was sealed in a teakettle, but he did so voluntarily, to save his child from the same fate. The cat that became Nekomata was burned alive on the funeral pyre of her owner, a boy who was killed by the first Raikage for not bowing. The shark that became Isonade was a young one, caught in a net, its fins removed for sport, thrown back into the ocean to die. The weasel who became Rokubi lost her children, and spent the years wandering, searching for them eternally."

"But how did they become demons?"

The Kyuubi licked at its paw, the tails moving serpent-like, unceasing, twisting and twining, before answering. "There are powers in this world who know injustice, and they lent us tailed beasts the strength needed to correct it. None may stand against justice. It may destroy armies, unmake the thrones of gods. But we did not use our newfound strength for justice: instead we forgot the crimes we needed to repay, and sank into insanity. We lost ourselves to madness, and became demons, creatures of indiscriminate destruction." It smiled, fearsome and ageless. "And by the time the powers and mankind knew what they had wrought, it was too late."

"What… what about you?"

The fox snickered, sighed, and said, "When I was younger, and had only eight tails, I roamed the world for centuries, alone. I came to a small village in the land that would one day be your country. It was full of poor rice farmers, and in that village there lived a simple man, a widower, who worked from dawn to dusk to support himself and his child. I wanted to test him." The Kyuubi shifted, its mood mercurial. "He saw me lurking hungry by the door, and every night without fail, he left a bowl of milk and rice."

"So he was kind, wasn't he?"

The Kyuubi's eyes were clouded, lost in the past. "He was a rarity, a diamond amongst filth. But he fed me when he did not have to. There are laws that govern our kind when it comes to such things, and I was no exception. Such generosity had to be rewarded. I took the form of a human woman and married him, bearing him a child. The man's name was Uchiha."

"What the hell-"

The fox growled at the interruption, making him shut up. "Those who are born from demons often have abilities that will pass on until the thousandth generation. Our firstborn son was named Madara, and his eyes were a blood-red, tainted with black."

Naruto gasped. "The_ Sharingan_?"

"Yes. Madara was a deadly man, dangerous and powerful, and he loved his family. Some might say that he loved them too much, for it was his love for them that killed him. But as Madara was the first to have the Sharingan, it was he who founded the Uchiha Clan." The Kyuubi's eyes were tired, and there was something like grief in them. "I saw the fault lines in his soul. I knew how easily he could break, and I ignored it."

'_Sasuke would freak if he could hear this._'

"Sixty-nine years ago," the Kyuubi said, "two brothers came to the village. The older one would become known as the First Hokage." Hatred dripped from its words.

"You knew the First?"

The Kyuubi glanced at him, condescension in every line of its body. "Quit interrupting me, fleshbag! The Hokage wanted to establish a village on that spot and subjugate the villagers. The villagers did not want to give up their land, and fought back, and Madara led the Uchiha and the villagers against the Hokage and his brother. The war destroyed the land, but the villagers refused to give up, even though everything that they were fighting for was lost."

"The end came. The Hokage's brother killed the other Uchiha, and Madara, maddened with grief, chased down the Hokage and fought him at the place that would become the Valley of the End. Madara lost, and thus was the war lost. The Hokage offered Madara a place by his side, but Madara- my son-" and the Kyuubi's voice softened imperceptibly, and Naruto could believe that the Kyuubi had once loved, "- could not live in a world without those he loved. He took a knife and cut his belly open before the Hokage's eyes, swearing that one day, he would return."

"The only survivors of the Uchiha were the old man who had fed me, and a daughter. The old man gave into the Hokage, and Konoha was founded sixty-eight years ago. The old man died, the daughter bore sons. The Clan grew again under the Hokage's guidance, but the Sharingan and the two Hokages were not enough to guarantee Konoha's survival. It was the weakest village, the newest one, and the other villages were circling it like wolves at the door."

"The Hokage offered a place in Konoha to anyone who would come and fight for it, no questions asked. The first jinchuuriki came, then, and went to war for Konoha's sake, fighting for a better world, a world that would be kind to them." The Kyuubi laughed, a rough, harsh sound like the shattering of glass, the water rippling against Naruto's legs. "They were fools."

"And when the war was over and Konoha no longer needed them, it drove them into exile."

"Wait, wait, wait-" Naruto waved his hands in the air as if batting at flies, "why isn't there anything about this in the history books? I mean, it's not like I paid attention to this in class or anything, but wouldn't_ somebody_ remember all this and put it in a book or something?"

"All who remembered did not want to face it, to talk about it. Those who live through such sorrow often do not want to remember." The Kyuubi tilted its head, grinned mirthlessly. "As for your books- history is written by the victors."

"There were whispers of Madara's return. His hatred for Konoha was so strong that he lingered in this world, taking over some poor fool. He returned and attacked the village, wanting to destroy it, to destroy the Uchiha Clan. He saw them as traitors for giving in. But spirits see different things than humans, and he saw me for what I was. The knowledge that he was a half-breed drove him even further into madness. He attacked me, almost killed me. The injustice of his violence towards his progenitor did not go unpunished, and the ancient powers gave me my ninth tail. I escaped his hold, but it almost destroyed me."

"Weakened, I fled. My weakness was my doom. I was soon sealed into my first prison." It licked its chops. "A simple girl, empty-headed, the daughter of peasants. She wanted nothing more than to marry a good man and have a litter of squalling brats. Instead, she was spirited away to the Village of Shadows to live in splendor, feared for her inhabitant. Madara followed, burning the Village to the ground. The girl let me out in an attempt to survive. She died in agony, and I- maddened, cruel as my son- ran for Konoha, and for one brief moment, I had glory."

"As for Madara," the Kyuubi said, almost as an afterthought, "he is still out there, hoping to find a way to revive the old Uchiha clan, to fight a final crusade against the village that destroyed his family and his life."

"So there was a reason for you to attack Konoha?" Naruto said softly, some sort of quiet relief filling him at the idea that there had been a reason for the attack, for the deaths of thousands. "Because they killed your son and your family, right?"

There was a roar, and he fell back, unable to breathe for the terror, as the Kyuubi's paws slammed against the bars, the world shaking around him, the red eyes burning with horrible fury as the Kyuubi snarled,

"Do not _dare_ insult me, fleshbag! I did it because I wanted to, not for any human reason like love or hate or vengeance, and if I had my way, I would do it again a thousand times over!" The Kyuubi's lips pulled back into a sneer, "The idea of unrepentant evil makes you uncomfortable? You have no reason to feel so; you are a shinobi, and what shinobi do is evil by nature. Don't you _dare_ patronize me." It was drooling at the idea of destroying Konoha once more, the water boiling and hissing as the phlegm hit.

Naruto stood, shivering and soaked to the bone, and stared at the kitsune, the beast that had sired the Uchiha, had seen Konoha founded, for a minute. He couldn't say 'thanks' for the story; honestly, he wished he had never heard it, hadn't had to know that the Hokages, the heroes of Konoha, weren't the wonderful heroes that everyone thought they were.

The Kyuubi was silent, eyes blank, dreaming of escape, of destruction. '_I guess all it has now are dreams._'

There was nothing to say, so he bowed his head and left.

* * *

Naruto woke, rubbing frost off his eyelashes, before rolling over and propping himself up on his elbows. 

Winter had come, and frozen grass crunched satisfyingly with every movement. The others were gathered around the small fire, hunched over their bowls of soup like black pumpkins. He slid out of his sleeping bag, wincing as his stomach- empty and bleeding- protested, and joined them, pulling on a fresh shirt.

The camp was a small spot in between a few of the cairns, the prayer flags snapping like whips in the wind. Flat fields were all around them, black birds circling the emptiness. Shinobu handed him a bowl of soup- made with tofu and ration bars, and definitely not as good as ramen- wordlessly, nodding in the direction of Yugito and Gaara, who were hunched over a map. The map was fluttering in the wind, the corners pinned to the ground with rocks.

"We can save at least three days of travel if we cut through Amegakure," Yugito argued, her blonde hair dirty and sticking to her head with the dust of travel. Naruto felt at his own head, felt the tacky blood stick to his fingers, and grimaced, plopping down between Yugito and Gaara. Riko was wearing a blindfold, sitting beside Gaara, one hand splayed out on the ground, another resting on Gaara's ankle.

"Hey, Riko," he tossed over his shoulder, taking a gulp of soup.

"Hello," she said, tilting her head in his direction. "Who are you?"

"Naruto Uzumaki, of course!" he said cheerfully, sticking out a hand. She groped at the air, found it, and shook. Her hands were rough with dirt.

"Rate of words per minute is two-hundred-and-twenty," she said thoughtfully, "temperature is below average. Pulse accelerated. Voice higher-pitched than normal." She pulled her hand away, nodding as if the mysteries of the universe had just been revealed. "Nice to meet you."

"Uh… you too." He glanced at Yugito, noticing her pensive frown. "What's the problem?"

"If we go through Amegakure, we can save time, but there is a large problem with doing so," she said, cursing and piling more rocks on the map as the wind picked up.

"Namely, Amegakure is a military, highly paranoid nation-state," Gaara finished. "Anyone going through the country is accompanied by guards at all times, not to mention that the borders are closed. It is quite possibly the most insular nation in recorded history. Plus, with the added variable of the new edition of the bingo book…" he trailed off.

"Probability of immediate death is sixty-five percent," Riko said dreamily, "Wind speed is forty miles per hour at thirty degrees north of northwest. Kunais thrown at maximum velocity will curve at least-" she named some huge decimal that Naruto didn't understand.

"Thanks for that," Yugito groused. "Okay, we'll go around Amegakure. This'll add a few days onto our itinerary, but we can deal with that."

"We'll have to," Naruto said, before tipping his bowl up and slurping down the last of his soup. He smacked his lips, "God, that's good, although it'd go better with some-" he paused, looking at Gaara and Yugito, who both had faintly nauseous looks on their faces.

"What? What, do I have something on my face?"

"No," Yugito said, "but those noises are a bit much so early in the morning."

"Fine, I guess you don't like the soup!"

"She made the soup," Gaara said. "Obviously, she likes it if she made it."

"One package of ramen contains 1560 milligrams of sodium, according to the nutritional information the doctors used," Riko informed them solemnly. "This soup is much more nutritious."

"I don't even know what's going on anymore," Naruto muttered, flopping onto his back and staring at the sky.

"You never did," Yugito said.

* * *

Kakashi was struggling not to commit homicide. 

"Yes, Mrs. Haruno, I understand your concerns," he droned, "but I can assure you that you have nothing to worry about." No one had told him when he took on Team Seven- the words were like a knife in his heart, sharp-edged, keen with longing and regret- that he would have to deal with the parents.

He had somehow forgotten, in between having the orphaned scion of the Uchiha Clan and the unwanted jinchuuriki of Kyuubi as his students, that Sakura even _had_ parents.

"No," Mrs. Haruno said, folding her arms across her chest and lifting her chin, "I really don't think you do."

Kakashi spared a thought to being grudgingly impressed; most civilians would never stand up to one of the shinobi, much less _him_.

"Our daughter hasn't been home in two _weeks_," she continued, running fingers through her faded auburn hair, "and we haven't said more than three words to her in over a _month_. When she's not studying medicine with the Hokage, she's studying combat with the Uchiha boy- she even sleeps at his _house_, for heaven's sake- and when she's not with him, she's practicing her- what was it, dear?" She turned to her husband in entreaty.

Sakura's father was portly and mustached, dressed in his hospital scrubs, laugh-lines creasing his eyelids. Except he wasn't laughing.

"A naginata," Mr. Haruno finished. Kakashi leaned back against the doorframe of the Haruno's over-decorated, floral-scented living room, stuffing down the urge to make a quick escape. He could do it, but that wouldn't be proper, much less brave, and if there was one thing Kakashi Hatake wasn't, it was a coward.

He ignored the fact that bravery and having a deathwish were two very different things.

"The naginata is an appropriate weapon for Sakura," he said. "It is the traditional weapon of the medical shinobi, due to its ability to clear large spaces in a short amount of time. As for spending time with Sasuke, it can only help the team unity and her progress. She was the most intelligent in her class."

Neither of the Harunos looked mollified. Kakashi continued.

"Despite that, in the beginning, I found her unmotivated, frivolous, and weak in all practical applications of her knowledge-" Mr. Haruno straightened, about to protest, "-but I must confess that I gravely underestimated her. Her skill with medical jutsu is improving at a very rapid pace, and even her problem areas- taijutsu and ninjutsu- are also coming along. If she continues growing at her current pace, she could make it to Jounin in five years, and into ANBU or the Hunters in six."

He dropped his voice, wanting them, _willing_ them, to understand the import of what he was saying. "I believe that she could be considered the best kunoichi of her age group. You should be proud."

"_Proud_?" Mr. Haruno squeaked, shoving the chair back as he stood up. "We should be _proud_ that our daughter, our only child, has gone into the shinobi, that she's going to spend the rest of her life-" he laughed, half-hysterically, "whatever little of it she has left- fighting and killing?"

His wife laid her hand on his shoulder, her face pinched with weariness. It was obvious that this was a battle they had waged many times with their daughter, and lost every time. "She wanted to do it," she said softly, "She wanted to. And maybe it wasn't for the right reasons-"

"_What reasons_? What reason could she have? I've seen the ANBU," Mr. Haruno whispered, "I've gone into their hospital ward. You don't understand, Ayame. You haven't seen them, the way they scream their dead friend's names, the way they claw themselves to pieces trying to escape because they think we're the enemy. You haven't seen the ones who attack their families, who have to be straitjacketed because they'd try and strangle themselves otherwise." Mrs. Haruno clapped her hands over her ears, shaking her head in fierce denial, keening. Her husband didn't relent.

"She's our_ daughter_, Ayame! We're supposed to protect her, not watch her slip farther and farther away from us until all that's left is an unused bed and a child that died when she entered the Academy." His voice shook.

Kakashi could take no more of their insults.

"_Enough_," he ground out, his hand itching with the urge for Chidori, for lightning crackling across his fingers. "Sakura may not have gone into the shinobi for the right reasons, that is true." He swallowed his fury, forced his chakra down. "But she _stayed_ for the right reasons. She stayed for a promise she made to a friend, she stayed for her comrades, she stayed because she wanted to learn." He stalked closer, growling, "She stayed because she wants to make sure that people like you can sleep safe in your beds, untainted by others' blood, secure in your own moral superiority. And you will_ never_ understand the sacrifices that shinobi make for this village, for the people of this village.

And to think that she doesn't understand what she did, and why she stays, is to insult her worse than anything else you could ever do."

He blinked, came back to himself, saw the two cowering away from him, felt shame burning inside him.

"I apologize," he said, bowing his head. "I shouldn't have lost my temper." To have lost control like that- it was unforgivable. And even the fact that the stress of trying to cobble together a team from two pieces that couldn't work without the third and a piece that didn't fit in anywhere weighed heavily on his shoulders didn't excuse that. He raked his fingers through his hair, finished, "If you want to get her to come home, you'll need to talk to the Hokage and get her to intervene."

"You're her_ teacher_!" Mrs. Haruno said, scandalized.

Kakashi felt tired and very, very old. "No," he breathed, "I'm not. She and Sasuke-" and this truth _hurt_, an aching in his chest like the sundering of his heart, "- have gone to a place where I cannot follow."

They had left them all behind, chasing the sunlight of a boy who had run into the open arms of a demon.

He left the house and leaped onto the rooftops, running over the gables and tiled plains to land silently beside the walled Uchiha compound.

He wished that he was dreaming.

Sasuke and Sakura sat together beside the koi pond, a map of the Hidden Countries stretched out before them, circles drawn around several of the villages. Sakura's naginata rested against her shoulder, blade glinting wickedly. The two leaned together, pink mingling with black, conversing in low voices, absorbed in tracking the dusty pathways that their missing comrade had traveled.

Obito's eye burned at the sight of it, those two lost souls searching for what they had lost, stumbling blindly in the dark, forever chasing the sunlight.

He could not look, and Kakashi Hatake, for the first time in his life, ran.

* * *

**Annotations**

'_There are powers in this world who know injustice, and they lent us tailed beasts the strength needed to correct it. None may stand against justice. It may destroy armies, unmake the thrones of gods._' – Inspired by some of Vhailor's dialogue in Planescape: Torment.

* * *

**A/N:** Only one more chapter and an interlude until the timeskip! Feedback is hoarded and stuffed with chocolate. All questions should go into the forum in my profile, as usual. 


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: **Here's the last chapter of part one. This was betaed by AisCrim, as per usual. I do not own Naruto.

* * *

_Where the road is dark and the seed is sowed_

_Where the gun is cocked and the bullet's cold_

_Where the miles are marked in blood and gold_

_I'll meet you further on up the road_

_- _'Further On (Up The Road)' by Bruce Springsteen

* * *

The long walk down to Numagakure took three weeks, and by the time they crossed the border into the Land of Swamps Naruto was ready to throw himself off the nearest cliff. Varg got a cold, something that Shinobu apparently couldn't cure, and spent a week coughing and hacking up his lungs. The oncoming winter followed them like a faithful dog, and Gaara- never easy to get along with at the best of times- got even grouchier than normal.

And Riko shadowing him didn't help the other boy's mood one bit.

"Hey, Shinobu?" he called. The older girl glanced over her shoulder and smiled, slowing her pace so he could jog up the line to walk beside her. The leafless branches of huge oaks stretched above the road, casting shadows like rivers on the dusty track. Varg and Moriko were farther ahead, the large man laughing soundlessly as Moriko's chubby fists wrapped around his beard and yanked.

"What's on your mind? Besides food, I mean," Shinobu added on, grinning and ducking as he took a half-hearted swing.

"I think about other stuff besides food!" Naruto shoved his hands in his pockets, "Just not very often."

"How about 'never'," Katashi interjected as he swooped by, snatching Shinobu's glasses off her nose and skittering up into the trees to bounce along above them, a shape of brown and blue in the crisp winter sunlight. Shinobu squinted blearily up at him, shrugging in resignation, before turning back to Naruto.

"I was just wondering, did you and Yugito ever get over the whole thing back in Iwa, with the genin and everything?"

Shinobu raked her hands through her thick dark hair with a sigh before smiling, wearied. "Yeah, she came and talked to me while you were-" she winced, "-incapacitated."

By which she meant 'in jail flipping out and killing a hundred people', but the jinchuuriki had a mutual agreement not to talk about stuff like that. Shinobu reached for Kusanagi and swung it idly to distract herself, the green flames hissing and twisting through the air. "She said that I shouldn't have helped the girl, that we couldn't trust anyone. She said that humans are worthless and deserve to die."

"She does that."

"I said that I had sworn an oath to assist people, no matter who they were. She said I could help people, but I have to ask her first." Shinobu laughed, the sound cracked. "Well, I never took the medic-nin's oath formally, because they said that I wasn't human enough to understand what it meant. But I believe it anyway. "

'_She looks the most human out of all us, and they acted like she wasn't human at all. But I guess things aren't always what they seem._' Like the First Hokage, worshipped and adored by every citizen of the village of Konoha, and none of them knew that his cruelty to Madara had driven him insane, and that Madara had driven the Kyuubi into madness.

He wondered what would happen if Konoha knew.

'_They wouldn't believe me. They never do._'

Naruto winced as the blood-encrusted cloth of his shirt pulled away from the bleeding seal, a seal that would never stop paining him until his bones were put to dust. There was a rustle in the air, his breath clouding in front of him, and Yugito dropped from the trees in front of him in a blur of black and yellow and blue.

"There's an abandoned inn three miles ahead. We make camp there for the night." Yugito didn't smile, but her eyes were marginally warmer. "I believe these are yours." She spun Shinobu's glasses in her fingers before placing them gently on the other girl's nose. "Don't tell Katashi you have them back. I want to see how long it takes him to realize."

Shinobu, speechless at the sudden display of friendship, could only nod. Yugito nodded to them both, her lips twitching into a faint smile when she met Naruto's eyes, before she leaped straight up into the trees and was gone in a swirl of leaves and blonde hair.

"Just when I think she forgot how to be a child long ago," Shinobu said wonderingly, "she comes out and does something like _this_." Naruto nodded in agreement, before glancing back.

Gaara strode along behind them with the decidedly funereal air of someone going to his own execution, one arm thrust unwillingly behind him and his jaw clenched. Riko followed him, her hand in his, her mouth curled in a smug grin.

"Well," he said, jerking his head at the two of them, "they still haven't remembered."

Shinobu's voice was soft and brimming with grief. "I don't think they ever will."

* * *

Gaara sat inside the inn, watching the rice-paper-muted sunbeams drift silently across the dusty tatami mats. His bag of ground-up glass grains was before him, and he felt the glass inside it shift at his call, creeping slowly up the sides of the leather. The phantom sensation on his fingers from working with the glass was uncomfortable, like he had plunged them into a huge ball of dust.

The others were outside. Katashi was attempting to teach Naruto how to call water from the ground, Shinobu, Varg, and Moriko were playing, and Yugito was presiding over it all from the roof like an old, irritable deity.

Riko was sprawled in one of the sunbeams, her blindfolded eyes gazing in his direction, her fingers- still, infuriatingly- curled in the hem of his tattered trousers. He rubbed his fingers together in an attempt to dispel the grimy feeling, and finally let his invisible hold on the thousand grains dissipate like sand in the wind, the grains collapsing back down into the bag, and turned to look at Riko more fully.

Her scarred face was blank, and he wondered if she was sleeping. A sandstorm of jealousy rose up in him at the fact that she could close her eyes and feel the silence and the warmth and the peace that he couldn't describe.

He had slept, once.

The bloodstains lingered on his fingers for days.

"Riko?" he said into the silence. It was not true silence, for Shukaku gibbered in his head, his shrieking and moaning mimicking the winds of the desert, avatar of a vast, remorseless hatred with no end and no beginning. His voice was quiet, as it had to be. She seized if they spoke too loudly. She rolled onto her side, the white streak of hair glinting.

"Yes?"

He thought for a moment about what to ask, how to ask it. It made no sense for her to attach herself to him. He understood that, and the others did as well. Logic demanded that she spend her time with Shinobu or Naruto or Katashi: one of the expressive ones. Children liked emotion, liked inspiring it in others and feeling it in themselves. He could not give her that. He was the desert, pitiless and faceless and in the end, completely alone.

"Why did you choose me? Logic-"

"-would lead you to believe that I would go with the others," she droned. "Understandable."

Gaara frowned. "Must you interrupt?"

"Why waste breath on something I already know?"

"I would prefer you not to, nonetheless."

Riko curled in tighter. Her voice was very small. "Sorry." Gaara didn't know what to do. He was not supposed to have to deal with children, even if she was not a child. He couldn't apologize- how could he when he didn't know what he was apologizing for?- and settled for silence.

The girl rolled her head in his direction and spoke again. "They gave me biographies of the jinchuuriki so that I would be aware of who I was to spend the rest of my life with. What remains of it," she added with a grim twist of her lips.

Death was all about her in an invisible shroud, shapeless, formless, and yet heavy and cold as steel. Someone who looked so young should not be so aware of their own mortality. Gaara shifted, Riko's fingers clenching white-knuckled at his clothing.

"Temperature thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit," she muttered, trying to center herself by forcing the sensory information that battered at her brain like a flashflood out into the open. "Five hundred grooves in the mat. Myofascial pain in annular ligament of left elbow." More words spilled from her lips in a torrent for almost a minute until she calmed, breathed for a moment, sighed.

"I read your biography," she finally said. Gaara had not known that he had one. The idea of anyone caring enough to put in the time to gather information on his life and then write it into a coherent narrative was absurd. He wondered if it mentioned Yashamaru, mentioned what he had done to the man who had loved- hated- him for so long.

"It had everything." The sunlight moved across the mat, glittered crystalline on the metal clasp of the bag of glass. Gaara felt bile in his throat at the idea that all of the things he no longer wished to remember was contained somewhere, a story of sorrow and rage and murder. Riko's hand twitched. "Including how you failed."

And there, the immutable truth, the imbecilic _pointlessness_ of it all, of his own existence. Because he had failed in the one purpose he had been brought into the world for, the only reason he existed at all. The weight of it, lessened by the truth that Naruto had brought- that he was more than a broken sword, more than a failure who was needed by no one and needed no one- settled on shoulders that had never stopped remembering it.

There was a horror in that, a terrible sadness that could not be eased, at the fact that no matter what he did with the rest of his life, he had still failed in realizing the dreams of his parents. Because children were the embodiments of their parent's dreams, and he had neither saved the village as his father had wished, nor destroyed it as his mother had wished when she gave him his name.

The others could not- no matter how hard they tried, and they did try, because they were jinchuuriki- ever understand that.

"For so long," Riko whispered in the muffled silence, "they called me subject A. 'Weapon', they named me, not 'girl' or 'child' or 'Riko'. I was no one. I was nothing. And then the seizures came and I wasn't even 'subject' or 'weapon' anymore." Tears leaked unbidden from beneath the blindfold. "Then they named me 'failure' and I was _worse_ than nothing." Her voice was thick, her nose red and running. She finished in a choked sob,

"I would have given anything to be 'subject' again, because when I was 'subject' I was worth _something_. And now I don't know what I am."

Riko understood. She understood the true meaning of failure as he did, understood in a way that no one else could ever do. She understood what it meant to have so little value in the eyes of others that you would be willing to kill them to make them see that you had something, even if it was only being judge, jury, and executioner. She understood.

He gazed at her small, thin hand curled against his ankle, white and traced with blue veins in the pale light. He didn't know how to help, what to say- Naruto was the one who did that, who comforted and cajoled and laughed. But he knew what Naruto would say. He would say the truth.

"Be Riko. That is enough."

* * *

"Sooo… this sucks."

"Uh-huh," Shinobu agreed from where she sat on the fence. Naruto glared at the sky, drumming his fingers on his crossed arms as he thought. Yugito had scoped out the small village in the swamp down the road, but hadn't seen anyone that looked like a jinchuuriki.

And he wasn't about to let any of the others go into the village, now that the bingo book was floating around the continent. He didn't want any of them to be thrown in jail, to have to do what he had done. He wiped his hands fretfully on his pants in an unconscious reaction, his fingers aching with the memory of claws.

"Well, none of us know any genjutsu, and even the passes we got from the Tsuchikage won't protect us if we don't have genjutsu. I could maybe send a few clones in, try to get into the public archives like we did to find Moriko."

"I have an idea," Shinobu said, brightening before hurrying into the tumbledown inn. Naruto glanced at Katashi, who was occupied with cleaning his sword, and shrugged. Shinobu came out again, dragging her pack with her, and took the steps two at a time before skidding to a stop beside him.

"See, we've got some of the black polish that shinobi use on their kunai when they're going on a night mission to make them non-reflective, and some paste that I use for filling cavities. If Katashi can get some water and some dirt, and you can summon a clone, I can change your hair color and fill in the scars on your cheeks."

"Great plan!" he said, summoning a shadow clone as Katashi drew up an orb of water from the earth. The clone flopped down on the steps, grinning at them all. Even Varg stopped playing with Moriko and looked over in interest. Moriko made a noise of discontent, the grass at their feet pulling at Varg's ankles to get his attention. Varg rolled his eyes and turned away.

Shinobu went to work, mixing dirt with cavity paste and smearing it over the clone's face, Katashi joining in with infectious enthusiasm, dumping the tin of black polish on the clone's head and rubbing it in. Yugito hovered around, making suggestions. She even stepped in to cut the sleeves off the illusionary clothing. The three workers parted, and Naruto stared at his clone.

He looked like Bushy-Brow if he randomly decided to invest in a new all-black wardrobe and started spiking his hair. It was an incredibly creepy effect. The clone's hair had the hard gloss and deep black sheen of an oil slick, and the clone looked like he'd gotten into an unfortunate accident with the self-tanner that the kunoichi used on missions.

But he didn't look like Naruto, and that was all they needed.

"Okay," Naruto said, grabbing the clone's hand and dragging him to the entrance to the courtyard, "the village is down there. Take this pass-" he slapped one of the Tsuchikage's passes into the clone's hand, "-and go to the archives. Look up the jinchuuriki, then disappear. Got it?" The clone nodded with the eager stupidity of a puppy. Naruto stared into its guileless blue eyes for a long moment. '_I used to be that person. I used to believe like that. _

_And somewhere along the way, I guess… I lost it._'

The clone turned and galloped down the road. Naruto watched it disappear into the darkening twilight, then turned and went back to the others.

"You should get some sleep," Katashi said. Naruto acquiesced, flopping down on the porch and folding his arms underneath his chin. He quickly slipped into a light doze.

It took only an hour before the memories of the clone came flooding back into his head. He grinned incredulously, rolling over and nearly falling off the porch.

Gaara looked up from where he and Riko were engaged in playing a game of shogi, the board drawn in the dust and the pieces small stones. "Did you acquire the information?"

"Yep! It was a cakewalk; the guards didn't even look twice." Naruto closed his eyes, shuffling through the memories of houses made of reeds and platforms rising out of the dark swamp, finally finding the memory of a faded name on paper. "Noboru Ito. Lives four miles outside the village to the northeast." He scrambled upright, yelled over his shoulder to the others,

"Let's go, guys! I found him!"

* * *

The windowpane was starred with frost, the thick fogs of the swamp swirling endlessly outside his window. The wind moaned softly through the mangroves, the leaden waters lapping at the stilts of his cabin.

Noboru got up from his bench, groaning softly as his aged knees protested, and groped for his cane, leaning on it as he made his way over to the tiny wood stove that heated his cabin. He curled arthritic fingers around the kettle, poured hot water into his chipped mug, and set the kettle back down, the heat from the mug soothing his swollen joints as he glared nearsightedly at the small table scattered with test tubes and paper from his latest treatise on the newest neurotoxins.

He raised the mug to his lips, wincing as his old war wound screamed in a white-hot burst of agony, and sipped the strong tea, gazing at the dried plants and carefully canned provisions hanging from the ceiling rafters.

Wait.

He tilted his head, listened. The sounds of the swamp had changed, grown still. The water sloshed harder against his home, and there was a golden glow- a lamp, not swamp gas- outside his window.

People. '_Damn it._' Noboru set the mug down and unscrewed the head on his cane, unsheathing the hidden blade. The poisonous vials strewn around the cabin rattled. All he needed to do was see the intruders, and that would be enough to produce poison in their veins.

Someone was knocking on the door, and a voice- a high-pitched one, squeaking with the first signs of maturation- called,

"Noboru Ito? Can we come in and talk to you?"

He tried to speak, but only dry hisses came from his mouth. '_How long's it been?_' Noboru blinked. It had been five years since he had last spoken to another human being. He frowned, tried to remember the words, found them.

"Who wants to know?"

There was the sound of squabbling, many voices arguing back and forth, before the first voice came back. "We're jinchuuriki! Can we come in?" Noboru raised a brow, eyes flicking without thought to the black seal curling around his upper arm. The sokou screamed inside him, and it was an effort not to surround the entire cabin with poison. '_Jinchuuriki._' He spared a thought to mourning the fact that someone so young was now a jinchuuriki, and limped to the door, unlocking the bolts and pulling it open.

A boy with blond hair fell through the doorway first in an ungainly sprawl of arms and legs. Another boy- this one with red hair and black-rimmed green eyes- stepped over him imperiously, followed by a blindfolded girl. Then came a younger boy with dark hair and webbed fingers, and a teenage girl with glasses. Another girl crowded in, moving with the sinuous grace of an ANBU- he had never seen one, only read about them; they had instituted that program long after his time- and still more came. A tall, foreign man whose back was made of scars stood behind the crowd, his eyes downcast, and in his arms was a baby with a seal around its eye.

Noboru swallowed, staring at these eight strange people who had suddenly invaded his peaceful life. The manners drummed into him by his mother, long dead these sixty years, flowed back into him. He tried his best to smile. "I'll put the kettle on."

* * *

Noboru Ito was a very odd-looking man, Naruto thought. A large black mark stretched over most of his face, and his eyes- like a reptile's- had slit pupils outlined in sulfurous green-yellow. The knuckles of his scarred hands were covered with shining green scales. His goatee and moustache were neatly trimmed, and his wispy gray hair was combed. It was a little weird for someone who lived all alone in a swamp to look so clean, but it certainly was much better than the alternative.

"So all the jinchuuriki are gathering?" Noboru said in the careful, precise manner of someone who hadn't spoken in a long, long time.

"Yes," Yugito confirmed.

"And I am the last one necessary to complete the nine?"

"Yep!" Katashi said cheerfully, perched on top of a bench and staring down at the brightly-colored vials. Shinobu was reading something that Noboru called a treatise, muttering under her breath.

"Voice is aged," Riko said, "core body temperature lower than normal. Smaller and slighter than average. I infer that you are geriatric." Noboru blinked. "How old are you?"

"_Riko!_" Shinobu said, scandalized, dropping the papers onto the table with a thump. Even Yugito stopped gazing out the window long enough to glare. Noboru laughed, the sound cracked and dusty and creaking like a rusty hinge as he waved Shinobu's moral outrage away.

"It's fine, truthfully. As for your answer, miss," Noboru's smile was sharp and full of dry humor, "old enough to have fought in the First Great War."

"Where were you deployed?" Gaara asked.

"I don't remember the name of the village," Noboru said with a shrug. "I do remember that I poisoned everyone in it."

There was a silence. Even Gaara looked faintly ill. "And after I completed my objective, they decided that I was too dangerous to keep, and exiled me here." Noboru's gesture encompassed the entire rickety room, "And I've been here for over fifty years."

"Well, you must be tired of it, after all that time, so why don't you come with us?" Naruto interjected.

"Not very subtle, are you?" Noboru said, amused. Naruto snorted, looking away. He hated being laughed at. Noboru continued, "But since I would hate to be the one to break the chain…" his yellow-green eyes glinted with good humor, "I suppose I'm obligated to come along, aren't I?"

"Awesome!" Naruto said, his voice filling the hut. "So now we just need to find the Village of Shadows, and Kyuubi says it's near a lake and a newer trade village in the jungle, so…" he grinned, "Got a map?"

* * *

Naruto wiped the sweat off his forehead, peeled his shirt away from his skin, the mud of the jungle caked all over his legs. Huge, bottle-green flies buzzed all around the jinchuuriki, got in their ears and their eyes and sometimes their mouths, trying to get the salt that was so scarce here. Bandages rotted off their skin, and their hair stuck to their heads with sweat and grime.

Yugito was at the head of the line, plowing relentlessly through the thick green vegetation, her machete whizzing through the air and slashing the dangling vines apart. Noboru followed slowly. The old man walked very painfully, hobbling on his cane, and his insistence on stopping to inspect every poisonous plant and animal slowed them down further. Shinobu was enjoying the chance to catalogue every insect they saw; apparently studying insects was a hobby for her. Riko had to wear even stronger earplugs, since the jungle was full of a riotous cacophony of birds and other animals.

The jungle was a terrifying place; every thing in it seemed to want every other thing to die. They had seen trees strangled to death by hanging vines, army ants spilling through the undergrowth, killing everything that was too slow or stupid to get out of their way. Huge eagles glared from the trees, picking at their prey's flesh with cruel beaks. Brightly colored frogs chirped, their eyes glowing red in the dim light filtering down from the canopy.

The jinchuuriki had left the small trade village behind yesterday. The people there- none of them shinobi- had stared suspiciously at them with dark eyes. Small antelopes- duiker, apparently, was the name- were penned behind the huts. The villagers told them where to find the ruins- 'the village of the dead', they called it- of the Village of Shadows, and sent them on their way.

He got the feeling the villagers didn't particularly like having shinobi in their peaceful village.

Noboru ran into Yugito's back, stumbling. Katashi caught him, and Naruto looked up, loping down the line to stop beside her.

"Problem?"

Yugito's eyes were open, and she stood as still as stone, frozen in mid-stride. Her eyes clouded over with black, darting back and forth. She was muttering under her breath. Shinobu came huffing and puffing up beside him, cupping Yugito's face in her hands and staring into the eerie black eyes.

Yugito finally blinked, frowning. "There are many dead people over there." She pointed to the left, then suddenly noticed that Shinobu was touching her. She pulled away, stepped around Shinobu with a curt, "Thanks."

"At least she acknowledged it," Naruto offered. Shinobu nodded, then ran back down to the line to keep Varg from plunging off after a duiker.

Yugito angled off the overgrown path, marching straight into the thickets, vines and flowers and branches falling before her machete. Katashi knelt, stuck his fingers in the dirt- apparently he could feel the presence of water in the dirt- and sprang upright, whooping and racing past Yugito, who jerked, the tip of her machete nearly cutting Katashi's nose off.

"A lake!" Katashi yelled as he pushed through the last thicket, stumbling over himself as his feet sank into the long curve of white sand. Bright, harsh light shone down from above as the other jinchuuriki came out onto the beach.

"Wow," Naruto breathed, gazing around at the vista. The clear water gleamed like steel, schools of fish slipping through the shallows; the river at the other end of the lake flowed sluggishly over the black rocks. The trees surrounded the lake in an impenetrable wall of green, and the never-ending racket of the birds and the insects was quieter here.

Katashi tripped and fell over himself as he struggled out of his muddy shirt and undid the straps holding his sword to his back, the seal across his skinny shoulders flexing as he scrambled to his feet and dove into the lake in a long curve, cutting the water like a knife. Shinobu waded in after him, stooping and washing the lenses of her glasses, while Yugito kept turning, following the silent whispers of the dead.

Katashi surfaced, turned on his back, spitting water into the air, his webbed fingers and toes propelling him through the water. "I can't breathe it," he complained, "It's _freshwater_. This sucks- hey, fish!" He dove back down like a falcon swooping, disappearing into the darkness of the deep.

Gaara was further up the beach, sand crawling up his arms as he tested it to see if he could use it. Riko was standing beside him, pathetically eager for affection. Gaara ignored her.

'_I guess he can't change that fast. But still…_'

"Hey, Gaara!" Naruto said. "Does the sand work for whatever it is you want it for?" Gaara nodded and stood, brushing the sand off his fingers. Shinobu shrieked, and Naruto turned to see Katashi menacing her with a flopping fish, the Hachibi jinchuuriki backpedaling furiously.

'_Note to self: Shinobu is afraid of fish._'

"I found the village," Yugito called from where she stood at the mouth of the lake. Naruto jogged to her side, slowing as he picked his way over the rocks. She pulled aside the curtain of vines and hanging flowers that covered the entrance into the clearing, and Naruto gasped.

The walls of the Village of Shadows still stood in the open clearing, glittering in the sunlight like diamonds, a long unbroken curve of stone. Dark vines twined over the white stone, marred with long swaths of black charring from Madara's attack, and the huge metal gates, pale green rust tracing over them, were firmly shut. The village was utterly silent.

"Awesome!" Katashi said, pulling his shirt on as he came up beside them. Shinobu helped Noboru up over the rocks, the old man staring at the village, impressed.

"Very interesting. I see I made the right decision in coming along, obviously."

"_Obviously_," Katashi parroted before leaving the group and running towards the walls. Naruto flashed a grin at Gaara and followed, his feet pounding the soft earth as he caught up to Katashi and outstripped him, howling with laughter.

"Too slow," he taunted, slapping the wall. Katashi finally reached him, red-faced and irritated. The others followed more sedately, Varg gazing wide-eyed at the huge walls. Even Moriko stared. Naruto turned and inspected the gate. '_No handles, no locks… wait, what's that?_'

Underneath the pale emerald of the rust, a circular glyph was engraved. The others gathered, Varg rubbing the rust away so they could see the design more clearly. It was a curving, looping thing, dotted with something like grains of sand. It looked… just like the lines on Shukaku's body, the seal on Gaara's shoulder.

"Hey, Gaara! Try touching the gate." The Shukaku jinchuuriki glanced at him before resting a pale hand on the design.

Gold chakra sparked on his fingers, wild and dry and hot- the chakra of Shukaku- before seeping into the metal, crawling over the glyph, illuminating it in a shape of golden light. The earth shook beneath their feet, a vast groaning noise filling the air as long-unused machinery shook off its rusty bonds and stirred back to life. The gates creaked open, and the jinchuuriki walked into the Village of Shadows, their footsteps disturbing dust that hadn't moved for fifty years or more.

The village was set up in concentric circles- there was another wall before them- and where they stood, there was only sand. Burnt-out husks of buildings leaned against the walls, and Yugito staggered, stumbled, fell to her knees and hacked up bloody phlegm, humming with black chakra. '_Too many of the dead to handle._' It was a horrible thought, that enough people had died here that even the Nekomata couldn't deal with it. Shinobu hurried over to help her to her feet.

Gaara was standing utterly still, and the sand around him was humming, rippling, swirling slowly around his feet in a maelstrom. His expression was wondering, serene, as if he'd finally come home.

"Let's get the next gate," Noboru suggested. Shinobu helped Yugito over to the gate, this one engraved with a copy of the seal around Yugito's neck, a seal of bones and flames and death. Naruto glanced back at Gaara, who was now kneeling, his arms in the sand of his domain all the way up to the elbows. He looked at peace. Riko had left Gaara's side for once, standing near Varg.

The next seal glowed black, the gates opening into the Nekomata's home. The next circle was-

It was a graveyard. Or had been, at any rate- now, the gravestones were only nubs of rock, trapped within flowering vines. There were bones, thousands of them, heaped beside the rickety, falling-down temple, and a sluggish river ran through the circle and underneath gaps in the walls. The Nekomata jinchuuriki must have been the caretaker of the graveyard, Naruto thought as he watched Yugito stumble over to the graveyard and sit down, holding her head in her hands as she let the last thoughts of the nameless dead come flooding into her mind.

"Me next!" Katashi clamored, running over to the next gate and slapping his hands on it. Blue-black chakra flickered, running over the seal of waves and teeth, the gates swinging inward. The next circle was full of water and the rusty remnants of stilt houses, small streams and ponds running everywhere. The water was full of algae, and no fish swam, but Katashi solved that problem immediately. He touched the water, the algae withering, dying away into nothing, the water running clear throughout the village once more. Katashi grinned in triumph, turning. "I'm going to go get some fish from the lake!" he called, before running out of the village again.

The process repeated over and over again. Noboru's domain was full of more houses, what looked like the ruins of a laboratory- for poison, Noboru said, before hobbling over to start searching for useful things- and the remnants of shops. The signs of battle were everywhere: rusted sword hilts, scales of armor, kunai and senbon fallen in the dust. There was silence, and all Naruto could think of was the people who had once lived in the village: exiles and jinchuuriki, searching for a place to call home.

Moriko's home had been the place where the village grew food, the outlines of old farms everywhere. Watermelon plants and strawberry vines were underfoot, climbing towards the sky on the frames of the old houses and sheds. The jinchuuriki shoved their way through the waist-high golden grain, before Varg reluctantly set Moriko down in a clear spot. Moriko burbled happily, the sheaves of wheat bending towards her as she played. '_God, is she really one year old already?_'

Varg placed his hand on the door, glancing back worriedly at Moriko before jerking away as the lightning-bolt seal on the gates flared white-blue. Tall trees were everywhere, and the rusted remains of old electrical generators were scattered among the forest. It seemed really stupid for the Rokubi jinchuuriki of the past to have a job in providing electricity, but whatever worked for the village, he supposed. '_As long as I don't have to learn anything about it!_' Varg brushed his dark blond hair out of his eyes, surveyed his domain with disinterest, and turned away, heading back to Moriko.

Riko muttered something about 'barbarians with guilt complexes who took their occupations far too seriously to derive any benefit from it' – Naruto and Shinobu stared at her for a long moment until she demanded peevishly that they guide her to the gate or at least stop staring- and let Naruto show her the gate. Brown chakra flared over a seal of mountains and valleys.

"Describe it to me," she demanded.

"Uh, well," Naruto said, staring around, "there's a lot of dirt, some flowers, what looks like a few houses- I think, they could be shops- some bones, a lot of buildings made out of burned stone. Looks a lot like Iwa, actually. Umm… there's not much of anything else. I think they were trying to cut down on- what'd you call it?"

"Sensory overload," Riko supplied. She chewed on her lip for a moment before saying imperiously, "Acceptable. I will now engage in clearing the remains. Please vacate the area."

"Okay," Shinobu said, turning and strolling over to her gate. The seal of demons and wings lit up in luminescent green, and the two glanced at each other with trepidation. Shinobu took Naruto's hand with a quick smile, and they faced forward and walked into her home. Tall trees grew everywhere, shaded paths wandering through the forest, and the skeletal wooden frame of what had once been a little cottage slouched underneath one of the nearest trees.

"So many shadows for the demons to travel through," Shinobu said, grinning as she knelt at the edge of one. Naruto looked over her shoulder, seeing the glowing white eyes moving in the depths. Shinobu was fixated on them, apparently getting to know the lesser demons of this new area. Naruto looked up, his breath catching in his throat.

The last gate loomed ahead, gleaming bronze and green in the sunlight. He went to it, his hand hovering in the air, tracing the seal on the door, the clone of the seal now bleeding on his belly, punishment for loosening the demon's cage. He wondered about the first jinchuuriki, the farm girl who had given up all hope of a future for this, wondered if she had walked the same path, felt the same fear.

'_I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and I don't give up. No gate's going to scare me._' He took a deep breath, let his palm touch the cold metal surface. He felt something click into place inside him like a key in a lock, the seal flaring blood-red, hot as a star, the sound of great tumblers turning inside the door filling the air.

The gates creaked open, and he walked into the center of the village. He didn't really know what he had been expecting, but this wasn't it.

A giant tree, larger than the greatest trees of Konoha, towered overhead, green and leafy, a carpet of green, springy grass bending underneath his feet. It looked like a park, except for the bones.

There was a skeleton half-hidden in the grass, fire-charred, short and slender. The jinchuuriki had fallen with her face to the foe, sacrificing herself for the village that had given her a home when all else seemed lost. The Kyuubi twisted inside him in vicious satisfaction and subsided.

Naruto let his eyes close in grief for her, the simple, quiet girl who had asked for nothing more than to marry a good man and to live a good life, who had died in pain and terror, and passed by. There was a tiny house at the base of the giant trunk in surprisingly good condition- the tree had shaded it from rain and wind- the door hanging open.

He went inside. There was a shattered mirror on the floor, and he knelt to gather the pieces up. Nine broken pieces. Nine broken jinchuuriki, sharing the same burden, but coming out wounded in different ways. The symbolism was so cheesy, so stupidly _poignant_, that he turned his hand and let the pieces fall to the floor once again.

In the rotting remnants of the kitchen table, there was a molding, leather-bound photo album. It was weird to see something so ordinary here, and he opened it, the gap-toothed smile of the Kyuubi's jinchuuriki in life meeting his gaze.

She couldn't be called beautiful; her face was too rough-hewn for that, the scars of the Kyuubi's whiskers marking her, her teeth crooked, her hands callused. The kimono looked ridiculous on her muscular shoulders, but she wore it like it was the prettiest dress in the world. Naruto found himself blinking away tears, smiling. Her joy was infectious, her happiness at simply being alive radiating from the photo.

He turned the page. More jinchuuriki, all showing the signs- gills, black-rimmed eyes, claws- forever immortalized on yellowing paper. Their eyes were weary and old, and he recognized the look, recognized the pain, recognized the terrible loneliness in them.

They had been lonely all their lives, but the jinchuuriki of now… they would never be lonely again. It had taken six months of constant walking, constant exhaustion, and he had sacrificed more than he ever thought he could bear.

But it was worth it.

All the heartache and terror and toil-

It had always been worth it.

* * *

**A/N:** After this, there's an interlude covering the six years, and then part two begins! Reviews are adored. All questions should go into the forum linked in my profile. 


	18. Interlude

**A/N:** Here's the interlude covering the timeskip. I apologize if it seems rushed; I'm trying to cover the salient points of six years without having the chapter be thirty pages long. I hope you like it. Any questions should go in the forum in my profile.

* * *

_16 years old when I went to the war,_

_To fight for a land fit for heroes,_

_God on my side, and a gun in my hand,_

_Chasing my days down to zero_

- '1916' by Motorhead

* * *

"What do you think?" Naruto asked around a mouthful of homemade nails, a hammer in one hand and a picture frame made of sticks and twine in the other. 

"To the left," Katashi said.

"No, the right," said Shinobu, folding her arms across her chest. "That way it'll get some sunlight."

"I don't know if sunlight's good for old pictures," Naruto said doubtfully. Yugito rolled her eyes from where she stood in the living room doorway, charcoal smeared across her nose.

"Just put the damn thing in the center and be done with it."

Naruto turned on the stool and tapped in the nail before hanging the picture. He hopped off the stool, backed up, and grinned.

The faces of the first jinchuuriki, forever unchanging, gazed out blindly from beneath the glass. The first Shukaku jinchuuriki was there: a middle-aged man with dark hair and dark eyes. So was the first Nekomata jinchuuriki: a small, solemn boy who never smiled in the two pictures they had of him.

Gaara didn't like to look at the pictures; Naruto thought that maybe he didn't like the thought of someone else having suffered the same way he did. Yugito had stared at the pictures of the little boy for a long time, her hand resting on her stomach, and turned away, stalking off into the twilight, the night air ringing with the noise of her frantic searching.

They had buried the boy's skeleton the next day.

"Perfect," he said, tossing the hammer and nails back into the wooden bucket. "Let's go eat."

"Awesome!" Katashi raced out of the house and flung himself down by the small fire, Noboru obligingly moving aside. Some of the fish from the small streams that ran through the village were already cooking, and a pot of Noboru's ever-present tea was heating.

Shinobu followed, walking beside Yugito, the two chatting about Yugito's latest historical discoveries- something about reconstructing how Madara had attacked from the memories Yugito had gotten- and Naruto closed the door behind them.

The air was warm, and the moon overhead was bright, everything washed in a silver haze. Naruto flopped down beside Gaara, taking the bowl of soup the other boy passed him. It was the anniversary of their arrival in the Village of Shadows, and tonight was a celebration.

"How're the tunnels, Riko?"

"Progress is improving," she said, "and I think that I can optimize the size and length for easier travel between the domains." Naruto reached out, ruffling her dark hair. Riko smiled shyly, her head turning as Moriko's shrieks of laughter reached them. Varg was chasing butterflies, Moriko bound to his back with blankets.

Naruto turned back to his soup, his heart full of love, his spirit content.

He woke up the next day, and the seal no longer bled.

* * *

Pain followed Madara down the gloomy hallway, Konan beside him. It had been two years since Uzumaki and his compatriots had disappeared off the map. 

"An S-class missing-nin from the Land of the Moon arrived last night," Madara said in his broken, terrible voice. "She has Orochimaru's ring."

Pain almost stumbled, but recovered, Konan's hand on his elbow holding him up. '_Someone killed Orochimaru?_' He bared his teeth in a grim smile of satisfaction. "Good." The door opened, Madara ushering them through.

The woman standing in the shadows resembled nothing so much as a giant, corpulent spider. Her pale eyes glittered beetle-like from beneath dishwater-colored hair, her round, blank face utterly colorless. Orochimaru's ring gleamed on her finger. A sack, dribbling blood across the floor, lay slumped at her feet, shapeless and lumpy, as if it contained several large melons.

"Sayuri Komatsu," she introduced herself in a voice as bland as the rest of her. "Genjutsu and intelligence specialist."

"You killed Orochimaru?" Pain said. Komatsu inclined her head in an arrogant nod. "I require more proof than the ring." Komatsu's lips twitched in a faint smile as she prodded the bag with her foot. Seven heads spilled forth, rolled to Pain's feet, smearing blood across the floor.

Orochimaru's, Kabuto's, a girl with red hair, a boy with dark skin, two heads fused together at the neck, and a man with the characteristic tattoos of the Kaguya Clan of Kirigakure.

"I see," Pain said in an attempt to hide his surprise. He failed, Komatsu's gaze sharpening. Madara leaned against the wall in the corner, remote, alone, his slowly whirling Sharingan flicking from one to the other. Konan was silent, her expression one of distaste as Orochimaru's blood lapped at her shoes.

"Uchiha-" Komatsu indicated Madara, "-has informed me that you are in need of someone who can create genjutsus powerful enough to fool the Kages into believing that Konoha is a threat."

"You can do so?"

Komatsu performed a few seals. Four corpses melted out of the ground, their hitai-ates marred with charcoal. One from Iwa, another from Kumo, Kiri, Suna. Their blind eyes gazed into eternity, lips burned away, teeth bared forever in a silent scream.

"When analyzed, these bodies will show that they were killed by jutsu native to Konoha."

"They can stand up to scrutiny?"

"They can withstand even the Sharingan," Komatsu glanced at Madara. "If you would?" Their leader glided forward among the bodies, masked face downturned, gloved hands twitching, curling into shaking fists.

"They are, for all intents and purposes, real," he finally admitted, his voice harsh with anger.

"They are modeled after ANBU that went missing from each of the villages. My network has provided me with photos, so these illusions will fool all of them."

"How long will they last?" Pain asked. Komatsu shrugged.

"As long as I want them to."

"I hope you don't think that we can manufacture a war solely based on genjutsu," Konan said. Komatsu bared her teeth in an unfriendly smile.

"Of course not. This is only one component. To manufacture a war without evidence is a simple task: we must provide false proof of Konoha's cruelty, play off of the Five Village's fears, institute a propaganda campaign painting Konoha as being warmongers and expansionists, denounce those who are willing to look twice at the evidence for lack of patriotism, and when Konoha insists that it has no ambitions, provide false proof that they are lying."

"What fears do you speak of?"

"Suna is suffering economically. With the loss of their greatest weapon, many of their contractors are going to larger villages. If we spread a rumor that Konoha is taking all of their business in an attempt to force Suna to submit and be annexed, the civilians- hungry for someone to blame for their poverty- will demand that something be done. The Kazekage-Temari, I believe, is her name- will have to give in, particularly when the other Great Villages begin mobilizing.

As for Iwa, they are biding their time. After the Third War, Konoha exacted several large reparation payments. This destroyed most of their funding for new medical research, and when the plague hit, hundreds died due to lack of research into the virus. Not to mention the seething hatred for the Yellow Flash, which was only exacerbated when Uzumaki killed an entire section of prisoners. Iwa wants vengeance, and it will be easy to force them to mobilize.

Kiri is still full of a genocidal hatred against all Clans. The Mizukage believes that they are dangerous, overly independent and semi-autonomous mercenary armies in miniature. Of course, the Kaguya Clan's attack on Kiri didn't help this impression. I can manufacture Kiri shinobi corpses, dead from attacks by Inuzuka, Hyuuga, and Akimichi jutsus. Feed the Mizukage's hatred, feed the people's hatred, convince them that the Clans of Konoha have imperialist ambitions to avenge the Kiri Clans' deaths…" Komatsu trailed off. Madara was nodding appreciatively. Komatsu glanced at him for approval, then continued.

"Kumo is the most difficult. They are economically sound, do not have any reason for vengeance, nor do they particularly want to expand. The Raikage is terrified of Konoha and anyone coming from Konoha. No doubt Uzumaki had something to do with that. But I can force him out of office and institute my own candidate. The one I have in mind lost most of his family in the failed raid on the Hyuuga, some years back. If I can prove to him that the Hyuuga Clan Head is alive and well, and that he killed the wrong one-" Komatsu smiled, "-then he will realize what he must do to avenge the deaths of the honorable Kumo shinobi who fell to kill the wrong man."

"As for the lesser villages and countries, they will fall into place. They all want some of Konoha's land and prestige, and with four of the Five Great Villages at their backs, they cannot fail."

Her grasp of politics and manipulation was amazing, Pain admitted privately, even if she herself was loathsome. '_Even if she hasn't proven herself in combat against the others, we still require someone of her particular talents and scheming ability._'

Madara broke in. "Do you have an estimation for how long this operation will take?" Komatsu gazed down at the illusionary bodies, the white shapes of maggots writhing over the blackened flesh, the claw-like hands. She licked her lips, pale eyes hungry.

"I can have it done in four years."

Pain looked out the windows at the brooding, angry gray sky, and saw chaos looming on the horizon.

* * *

"Ready to try again?" Yugito asked. Naruto glanced over at Katashi, who was grinning in support, giving him a thumbs-up. Even Varg, his manacles gone from around his wrists- he had finally given them up, and he'd even started saying 'yes' and 'no'- was watching. Moriko was finally walking, a year behind schedule, but Shinobu said that it was normal for someone like her, and she was galloping up and down the sidelines of the sparring field, babbling encouragement. 

"I still don't know why you're trying to teach me to fight blindfolded," he grumbled, reaching up and pulling it over his eyes. '_Okay. You can do this, even if you have screwed up royally the last thousand times. Do it so Riko and Katashi don't think they've sucked at teaching me for the last three years._' He bit his lip, the chakra layered on the soles of his bare feet seeping into the soil, feeling the earth move underneath Yugito's steps as she circled around him.

"I'm doing this," Yugito said from behind him, "so that you won't be in danger from visual genjutsu." Her voice was bitter, and he thought it would always be: she wasn't the type to just let weaknesses go. He bit his lip, the fingers on his left hand flickering through seals as he turned, keeping his left side away from her.

More chakra fled into the air, a silent mist catching hold of water droplets and binding it to him. He visualized his surroundings- the water droplets burst as the kusarigama zipped at him, and he leaped over it, throwing Raikyus one after the other at Yugito- she'd left the ground, and only the disturbances in the water vapor told him where she was.

"Damn," he muttered, landing on his hands and flipping into a backspring as the chain whistled just in front of him. Yugito had landed, the earth compressing under her, and Naruto performed more seals as he spun through the air, the ground yawning, swallowing her ankle.

He fell into a crouch as he landed, shadow clones waiting under the soil. Yugito wrenched herself free, rushing him. The gap in the water vapor around him came closer, and he stumbled back, summoning water from beneath his feet, the water crawling up her legs, crystallizing into ice. Yugito paused, trying to melt the ice off her legs without shocking herself. The distraction was all he needed. The shadow clones burst from behind her, one sending tendrils of electricity at the kusarigama. She was forced to drop the weapon, the other clone holding a kunai at her throat.

"I win!"

"Actually, we both lose," Yugito said dryly.

"Huh?" Naruto tugged off the blindfold, blanching as he saw the ball of lightning hovering inches before his face. He looked down at where his feet disappeared into the shallows of the stream. '_Oh, fuck._'

"You would've killed me, but I would've also killed you before I died. Not the preferable outcome, but better than a loss."

"How about neither of you dying at all?" Shinobu suggested as she knelt down beside Yugito to heal the scrapes on her legs from the ice.

"Great job!" Katashi said as he stampeded into the shallows, scattering fish, his hair clinging to his head as he slapped Naruto on the back.

"Thanks; couldn't have done it without your techniques." Naruto slung an arm around Katashi's shoulders, 'oofing' as Moriko ran headlong into him, throwing her arms around his leg and making a demanding noise.

"Oh, fine. Come here, brat," he said, scooping her up in one arm and settling her on his shoulders. Moriko grabbed his hair, yanking.

"_Ow!_ I'm going to give you back to Varg; at least he doesn't get hurt when you grab his hair."

"He's probably used to it by now," Katashi said.

"His scalp's made of metal."

"No," Varg said, folding his arms around his chest, thrusting his chin out at the insult. Lightning crackled in the clear sky up above.

"What do you think we should do?" Katashi glanced at Naruto fearfully.

"My vote's on 'run!'"

* * *

"Welcome to the ranks of the special jounin of Konoha, Sakura Haruno," Tsunade intoned solemnly, the green flak jacket in her hands gleaming. Sakura brushed her ear-lobe-length hair out of her eyes, turned to meet Sasuke's gaze. 

His lips twitched in something resembling a smile, his skinny shoulders already hidden beneath his own jacket. Kakashi stood behind him, dark eye fixed on her, pride in his students in every line of his body. Sakura took the jacket, slid her arms into it as it crackled with newness, felt its weight settle against her, heavy with meaning.

Heavy with regrets.

The audience and the other members of the Rookie Nine applauded as she descended the steps from the dais, Sasuke handing her naginata back.

"So how's it feel to be the first combat medic special jounin of Konoha?" Sasuke said, shaking Kakashi's hand off his head as the older man tried to ruffle his hair. Sakura reached for the scrolls that she and Sasuke had stockpiled, sliding several of them into the pockets of her new vest as she answered,

"Pretty good, actually." She frowned, glancing about the large room. Teams and families clustered together in the corners, congratulating the new jounin. "Where're Sai and my parents?"

"Sai's at a meeting with Danzo," Kakashi said from behind his book, "and your parents weren't able to come."

"By which you mean they didn't _want_ to come because they don't like the thought of me dying in combat?"

"Yeah."

Sasuke shoved his hands in his pockets as they strolled out of the hall, hitai-ate wrapped around his arm. "I suppose we should celebrate." He sounded less than enthusiastic as he looked around at all the people rhapsodizing over the other special jounins' promotions. "Seems to be the popular thing to do."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "And since when have you been concerned with being popular?"

"I never was. It was just forced upon me."

"And I'm sure you hated it _so_ much," Kakashi said.

"I did!" Sasuke protested half-heartedly, swerving out of the way as a gaggle of children raced across the room.

"Want to go to Ichiraku's?" Kakashi suggested, his expression almost nervous, as if he wasn't sure that he was allowed to mention it.

Silence. Her heart thundered in her ears, pounding out a litany- _Naruto, Naruto, Naruto_- of grief and loss. She and Sasuke stared at each other, than turned to Kakashi, recognizing the same hollowed-out look in each other's eyes. They didn't talk about him- couldn't, in Sasuke's case, without falling into a brooding sulk that took days to emerge from- except in the abstract.

He had been light and laughter and love, the memories of him hoarded greedily even though they cut with the possibilities of what could have been: what _should_ have been.

He had left them broken and raw and scrabbling in the dirt to try to piece together something that couldn't work with only three out of four parts.

He had hurt them more than anything else in the world could ever do.

The memories of her last sight of him, etched onto her brain in full color, flooded back. His insistence that it had to be that way even when it didn't, even when Konoha offered him a hand and a chance for redemption; his wearied face as he laid his hitai-ate down before them- "_You won't have to love me anymore"_.

Except they would always love him, had never stopped loving him even when the rest of the Rookie Nine pulled away.

She looked down at her fingers, clenching white-knuckled around the shaft of her naginata, and exhaled, long and slow, forcing her grip to loosen. He was gone. He was gone, disappearing off the map, out of history, four years ago, and she didn't know if he was alive or dead or even if she wanted to know either way.

"He should have been here," she said, her voice cracking, looking up with burning eyes. Kakashi put a gloved hand on her shoulder in silent support. Sasuke glanced away, hiding the tears she knew were in his eyes, his shoulders stiff, hands curled into fists in his pockets.

"Yeah," he said.

They should have all walked up on the dais together and Sasuke should have gotten his ninjutsu specialization and she her medical specialization and Naruto his 'bloody-stubborn-knucklehead' specialization, and… _oh, God_, it hurt, and she scrubbed angrily at her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

The three of them stood together, a tattered, torn family mourning a loss that was still sharp, still keen. A long moment passed, Sasuke's shoulders shaking, her eyes burning, Kakashi's fingers crushing the pages ofIcha Icha. She took a deep breath, pushed back the memories, regained control.

But today- today was a day to celebrate, not to mourn the lost possibilities, the hopes that died stillborn.

She swallowed, stood up straighter, smiled. "Let's go to Ichiraku's, then."

* * *

The Raikage gazed out across his villagers, their pale, tired faces now aflame with eagerness, with lust for conquest. The conquest of Konoha, the destruction of the Hyuuga that had made such fools of them for so long… it would be a perfect beginning to his reign. 

A particular face caught his eye. Hiroko Nii's aged eyes met his own, blue like her daughter's, the child sacrificed to contain death's shadow. The child long gone these five years. The money that his predecessor had given to her was still flowing: she had even moved into a larger house. But even that was not enough to give her back her self-respect. She was still unhappy, and would be so until she went to her final rest.

"People of Kumo," he roared into the wind and the howling fury of the mob, "for too long have we stood by as Konoha ravaged the continent! For too long have we watched as its shinobi killed ours without provocation!" The lurid photos were on his desk in the tower: so many bodies of their missing shinobi, killed with jutsu that only the shinobi of Konoha knew.

"We cannot stand by any longer. We cannot allow Konoha's rampant lust for land and wealth consume our country. For is not Konoha the youngest village, undeserving of its status? Is not the current Hokage a former friend of Orochimaru, he who takes the bodies of others? Did not their Hyuuga Clan, most prized of the bloodlines, kill our shinobi and give us a false gift in reparation?

_Have they not made fools of us for long enough?_"

"Yes!" the mob answered, the sound ringing off the walls of the valley. The Raikage allowed himself a thin smile. He continued.

"In a year, we will mobilize. A year will give us time to train more shinobi, to create new techniques, to become a knife aimed at Konoha's very heart. With the other villages at our back, with our shinobi and our skills, with our righteous fury, we will destroy that taint upon our continent."

A wordless howl of approval, fists clenching kunai thrust into the air, eyes wide, mouths open and spilling forth the fury of war.

"My people, for too long have you walked in the valley of the shadow of death. But now- now we shall strike down the proud Hyuuga, batter down Konoha's walls, salt their fertile fields so nothing shall ever grow again! We shall bring the light of conquest to Kumo!"

War opened its mouth and screamed from a thousand throats, closed its fingers upon a thousand kunai, turned its gaze towards Konoha.

War awoke.

* * *

"Shizune," Tsunade said, resisting the urge to rend the papers embossed with the Raikage's seal, the papers full of formal words that meant nothing more than 'we want to kill you', "-it's…" 

Her friend laid her hand on Tsunade's shoulder, squeezed in sympathy. "I've-" her voice broke, "I've spent so much of this past year _trying_ to make them understand that we don't want their money or their land or their clans; I've shown them the lists of shinobi that were out on the days of the murders, I've sent envoy after envoy out and none of it worked. None of our shinobi killed those foreign ANBU, I_know_ that, and they won't believe me because they're too blind to see-"

Jiraiya was leaning against the wall in the corner, unsettled, uncomfortable, biting the stem of his pipe in his teeth. But at her words, he shoved himself upright, pulled the pipe away.

"They're too blind to see that we all stand on the edge of total annihilation, of a war that could kill us all. And for what? Land that we don't even want, shinobi that we didn't kill-" he raked his hands through his hair in frustration, turning on his heel and throwing his pipe into the wall in a sudden, shocking spasm of rage. It shattered into a thousand pieces of clay. Drained, he finished, looking suddenly every inch his age, "I know Akatsuki's behind this. I know it and I can't prove it because there's no evidence except my own hunch."

The last of the Sannin stood together, sharing the bitter wine of failure. Tsunade shook her head, pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes as she said, muffled, "This is the last declaration of war. The other Great Villages are now all allied against us, and the other villages and the vassal villages are going to join in like sharks in a feeding frenzy. And I've got to figure out how to evacuate Kerumigakure, lay in supplies, protect the feudal lord…" her bones ached, her throat clogged with exhaustion and pain and sorrow, and she wanted more than anything else in the world to be able to cry.

"And I've run the projections and crunched the numbers and no matter what I do _nothing_ends up right. The best estimate has us losing over eighty percent of our shinobi, not to mention the widespread civilian death tolls. Worst case scenario, the entire shinobi force is destroyed, and maybe thirty percent of the civilians survive, but that doesn't matter since Konoha will be dead anyway." She opened her eyes, sat back. "Quite frankly, we're fucked."

Jiraiya swallowed. He had the look on his face that meant that _something_ had happened, and she really hoped it was good, because there was no way she could deal with any more bad news.

"Spit it out," she muttered, groping for her sake cup. Jiraiya reached in his pocket, fished out a photograph, sent it spinning across her desk with a flick of his wrist. She slapped a hand down on it, frowned.

The photo was of a young man, tanned with sun-bleached blond hair. He was shirtless and skinny, dressed in ragged black cutoffs, standing at the edge of a lake, poised to dive into the water. It was obviously a covert photo; there was no sense of acting, of playing it for the camera, at all. The background was a leafy green riot of flowers and vines- the jungle in the south. '_Who-_' and the breath froze in her lungs as she saw the three lines etched into each cheek.

"Uzumaki," she breathed.

"Yeah. I put out some feelers a few months ago, finally got a bite in a crappy little trading village in the jungle. Someone recognized him; apparently he and the other jinchuuriki are regarded as harmless eccentrics that decided to go tromping off into the jungle to live in some ruins." Jiraiya laughed, but it was without humor. "They didn't even know who he _was_, or what a jinchuuriki was!"

"You think we-" her brows drew together as she leaned back in her chair. "No. No, no,_no_- I don't care what bullshit you try to throw me, we are not going to ask the jinchuuriki for help."

"Do we have a choice?" Tsunade stilled, gazing at him. He met her gaze with tired eyes that had seen too much of war already, too much of the horror that mankind could wreak. Jiraiya tossed a sheet of paper on her desk. "I took the liberty of calculating the probability of our survival with the jinchuuriki at our side." She glanced down, took a shocked breath.

"Do we even have a choice, Tsunade?"

Her head dropped into her hands as she shoved her fingers into her hair, groaning. "No, damn you. No-" and she was compromising everything she stood for by offering a hand to Uzumaki, he who betrayed their village, but if it was between the annihilation of the village she was sworn to protect and the loss of her pride-

The choice was obvious.

"How long would it take to get down there?"

Jiraiya brightened at her implicit consent. "Two weeks at high speed, which would leave us three days to convince them to come with us. The other countries can't mobilize fully for three weeks as it is."

"What's to guarantee he won't lead the jinchuuriki against us?" Jiraiya grinned, opened the door, gestured for the people standing outside to come in. Tsunade straightened, surprised.

Team Seven, Team Eight, Team Ten, and Gai's team all filed in, throwing confused glances at each other. They were dressed in their uniforms, jounins all, but for the silent pair of black-swathed ANBU in the corner, flanked by Kakashi and Sai.

Tsunade closed her eyes in grief for them, the remnants of Team Seven, the best of their class, broken and bitter and lonely, throwing themselves upon the merciless blades of the ANBU in an attempt to become strong enough to bring him back.

"They will," Jiraiya said with a grand sweep of his arm.

"We will, what?" Kiba said, glancing about the room. "What's with the party?"

"You didn't tell them?" she asked.

"No," Jiraiya said. Tsunade rolled her eyes, looked up at them. Shikamaru's eyes were flickering around the room, lips moving silently, before he added everything up and sighed, shoulders slumping.

"Everyone here had a connection to Uzumaki. I assume you've found him?"

A clank of naginata and sword blades from the corner as Tsunade held up the photo. Hinata surreptiously moved a little farther away from Sakura and Sasuke, both of whose chakras were flaring. Kakashi muttered something to them, the two of them damping their chakra output. She got the impression that Sasuke was embarrassed at having lost control.

"Always the smart one, aren't you, Shikamaru? You're right; Jiraiya found him. He's living with the other jinchuuriki in a village in the south. Apparently, it's the historical home of the jinchuuriki and other sundry exiles. We're going to send all of you to bring him home."

"Why?" Chouji asked, picking up the picture. "Seems like he's happy enough the way he is." Tsunade bit the inside of her lip, her hands curling into fists as she nodded at the Raikage's letter.

"I've received a declaration of war from the Raikage."

Hinata squeaked, Kiba slinging his arm around her shoulders in a vain attempt at comfort. The jounin got her meaning at once, eyes narrowing, fingers going to kunai. "So we're alone against the world?" Shikamaru said.

"Yes. The chances of Konoha's survival at this point are slim. But if we can convince the jinchuuriki to join us, to fight for our cause-" she remembered the pictures of the dead Hunter-nin on her desk, remembered what lengths the jinchuuriki could go to when pressed, and continued, "then our chances of survival increase by a huge amount."

"But he betrayed our village!" Kiba snarled, flashing fangs, the very idea of such a betrayal anathema to his loyal soul. She rose slowly from her seat, fury boiling inside her as she hissed,

"_And_? What would you have me do? The very survival of our village is at stake here! Without them, the odds are good that Konoha- the Konoha you and I know- will be wiped off the map entirely. You will all die. Your families will all die. _Everyone_ you have ever loved will die."

The taste of failure was thick on her tongue as she finished, "Compared to that, is a little pride too much to lose?"

Kiba bowed his head and could not meet her eyes. "I know that many of you might not want to see him. You might not want to go and grovel to get him to return. But for Konoha- for the continued existence of our people- you have to." She sat, raked hands through her hair, closed her eyes against the bitter tears burning in her eyes at the thought of parlaying with a traitor. She opened her eyes, met their gazes, her jaw clenching.

"You _will _bring him home."

Sakura's voice echoed eerily from behind her mask. "We'll bring him home, Hokage-sama."

Her voice was soft with exhaustion as she said, "Good."

"You have two weeks to complete the task. That means that you have three days to convince him of our cause. At the end of those three days, no matter the outcome, return here as quickly as possible; the first enemy shinobi should cross our borders at the end of those two weeks, and I can't afford to have any of my jounin gone. Your former senseis will accompany you; if he decides to attack, you will need all the reinforcements you can get." She stamped their marching orders, closed the folder. "You leave tomorrow morning."

"Yes, Hokage-sama," they said in unison, their voices filling the room.

"Good. Leave me, please." They filed out in stunned silence, not speaking even when they made it out into the hallway. Jiraiaya laid a rough hand on her shoulder before leaving, the door clicking shut behind her.

Her tattered sob of frustration and guilt tore through the stillness as she stared blindly at the wall, the colorful lines of the map of the Hidden Countries catching her tearing eyes. She didn't want to look, didn't want to see her enemies' borders, her enemies' villages- but she had to.

She gazed at the map in silence, seeing the contagion of violence spreading across the borders like a cancer in her mind's eye.

'_The gears of war have begun to turn, and once on their circuit… they cannot be stopped._' She reached out, her fingers curling around the clay pitcher of sake for a moment, before she drew her hand away and stood.

She would walk through the village one last time, and there, in the summer twilight, in these final hours, she would taste her failure.

She would bid farewell to peace.

* * *

**A/N:** Reviews are adored. All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. 


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N: **I apologize for the long wait for the chapter; there was a death in the family. I hope you enjoy the chapter and it lives up to your expectations!_  
_

* * *

_When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,_

_Out of the corner of my eye._

_I turned to look but it was gone._

_I cannot put my finger on it now._

_The child is grown, the dream is gone._

_I have become comfortably numb._

- 'Comfortably Numb' by Pink Floyd

* * *

Kakashi wiped the sweat off his forehead, turning and glancing further down the line of mud-spattered shinobi. They were six days into the journey, and with every step closer to the Village- to Naruto- the tension in the air drew tighter and tighter. A foul mood of bitterness clouded the air, made his mouth taste of blood, everyone's pride wounded by the very idea of asking a missing-nin for help.

Sakura and Sasuke were at the head of the line, Sasuke with the directions from the trade village, Sakura's red dress blending in with the giant flowers and the jeweled insects that fluttered around their heads. Shino was in heaven, and only Kurenai's intervention kept him from running off after some particularly rare specimen.

His book was so damp from the humidity that the ink was running, and he was hot and wet and thoroughly miserable. It rained every afternoon, so hard that they couldn't make any progress, and when it wasn't raining it was as hot as the Wind Country.

It was early morning, and mountains of monsoon clouds brooded on the horizon, flashes of blue-white lightning slashing like sword blades into their depths, heralding the furious onslaught of water to come.

No one said anything; the only sound the howling of monkeys and the ceaseless buzz of insects. No one moved any faster than a slow walk, no one spoke, not even Lee. It was as if they were conserving their energy, their words, for Naruto.

Naruto. The picture Tsunade had shown _hurt_, a dull, throbbing ache in his bones of grief for Minato-sensei that had never quite left him. The boy had grown to look just like his father- Kakashi shook his head, swallowed his bitter sorrow- but that was all he resembled his father in.

Minato-sensei would never have abandoned his village. He would have stayed and sacrificed himself for Konoha, for every single person living there without a second thought. And Naruto- Naruto who had left them all behind- could never understand that.

Neji paused. The others halted, waiting.

"Byakugan!" Neji said, the pupils of his pale blank eyes appearing. Hinata followed suit, the veins around her eyes bulging as she bit her lip, Kiba's hand on her shoulder in support. The two Hyuuga- Main and Branch, united by their association with Naruto, the brave, the bold, the betrayer- stood together, silent.

"What is it, Neji?" Gai said, the Hyuugas' lips compressing into thin lines.

"Sent-sentries," Hinata said first.

"I don't know what they are. They look like-" Neji cut off mid-sentence, eyes widening as he breathed, "-demons. They're very… unnatural-looking."

"Where are you seeing them?" Kurenai asked.

"Th-there, and up there, and over beneath that tr-tree." Kakashi turned, searching the shadows of the jungle. Sakura and Sasuke flanked him, Sasuke's Sharingan whirling red-and-black in the patchy light filtering down from the canopy.

"I see them," Sasuke said, his voice humming with tension.

'_Well. You don't see that every day._' The Hyuuga had been right. Demons- for that was what they were, little serpentine black shapes with fins and wings and fangs and glowing, sulfurous white eyes- perched in the shadows of vines and flowers, hung upside-down from branches, heads tilted curiously, their chirps lost amidst the cacophony of the jungle.

Kakashi's skin crawled.

"They must be part of one of the jinchuuriki's abilities," Shikamaru said. But apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because as soon as the word 'jinchuuriki' left Shikamaru's lips, the demons screeched, the sound like the wailing of a lost child, and sunk back into the shadows like water droplets rejoining a lake, their white eyes flickering, disappearing into the blackness.

Shikamaru traced their directions in the air, muttering mathematic formulas and variables to himself before calling, "The Village is twenty degrees west of southwest." Sakura glanced down at her map and turned, murmuring insults at the mapmakers who hadn't even bothered to put down a compass or a scale.

"Should be a lake nearby. Kiba?"

Kiba nudged Akamaru, the giant dog- muddy and sweaty and irritable- raising his head and sniffing. His deep bark rang through the jungle, the eagles above launching in a flurry of feathers and talons, leaving the red smears of their prey decorating the tree branches like macabre party streamers.

"That way, Akamaru says."

Sasuke strode forward, machete flashing in the dim green light like sunlight on water, vines falling to the sharp blade. The others followed, Ino prodding Chouji for a share of his bag of chips. Asuma and Kurenai were walking together, exchanging lovelorn glances.

Another long half-hour passed, Kakashi's shirt sticking to his back with sweat, flies buzzing incessantly around his nose and mouth in a desperate bid for salt. Rotting logs fell apart under his feet like exposed viscera, the yellow eyes of predatory beasts shining from the shadows. '_I_hate_ the jungle._'

The sound of running water reached their ears as Sasuke chopped the last curtain of thinning undergrowth away, exposing the vista of a oval lake rimmed with pale sand, a leaden, meandering river feeding the lake. Brightly colored birds floated in the shallows, beady black eyes watching them, judging them as everything here did. There was no room for weakness or pity in the jungle.

The sixteen shinobi plodded onto the long curve of shimmering white sand with sighs of relief, Akamaru bounding into the shallows with an exuberant bark, Kiba following.

The others stood and watched, laughing as Kiba was shoved off his feet by Akamaru. Their laughter was forced, cracked, brittle with fear and nervousness and hope. Longing that maybe Naruto hadn't changed, that maybe he was still the same boy they remembered, full of life and love and energy.

He knew they would be disappointed.

Sakura, Sasuke, and Sai stood apart, laughing over some joke that Sakura made, the map dangling, forgotten, from Sakura's hand. Sasuke reached out, took the map, a muscle in his jaw jumping. Sakura's expression changed, the two of them suddenly reverting back to their ANBU personas, hard and grim and stubborn. Even if no one else wanted to see Naruto, they did, and they would shove their way through undergrowth and ford streams and climb mountains to see him again.

How stupid of Naruto, to have left them behind.

"Let's keep going," Sakura called the others in a voice hoarse with exhaustion. Kiba groaned, wading out and wringing his shirt out before pulling the wet garment back on.

"Kakashi," Asuma said, thumbs hooked in his waistband. Kakashi peered over the edge of his book. His eye hurt from trying to read the faded ink, his hand ached, and he wiped his palms on his pants, a cold sweat springing up on the back of his neck, rolling down his spine. His tongue was dry, and he didn't want to think about it, didn't want to think that in a few minutes he was going to see-

_Naruto, who he had believed in, who he had loved, who had been like Obito and who he had failed like Obito, who had left them all for no reason, who had let Gaara of the Desert crush Kakashi's hand into shreds-_

-him.

"Yes?"

Sasuke led them further upstream, searching for the clearing that was drawn on the map. The water- cold and full of silt from the erosion of the monsoon- swirled about their legs in a mad bid to pull them under. Asuma continued, "You really think this is a good idea? Bringing back someone that left Konoha just so we can survive? I mean-" the cigarette in his mouth twitched, "-what does that say about us?"

"It means that we are willing to sacrifice everything for our village," he paused, muttered, "even our pride."

"I guess, but-"

The machete whizzed one last time through the air. Vines fell like window blinds missing their strings into a green heap on the rocky lip of the stream. Kakashi closed his book, took a deep breath, tried to calm the storm in his heart- resentment and regret and love and grief and fury all in one- as he gazed across the clearing. The gasps of the others as they saw the vista reached his ears in a distant echo, every bit of his focus intent on the village.

The Village Hidden in Shadows lay less than a mile from them, its white walls curving away from them in a circle, the shadows of clouds dappling the stone and moving slowly across the expanse. A giant tree thrust upward into the sky from the center of the village, its spreading foliage green and gold. The open ground around the Village was flat and carpeted with an expanse of grass, a strange break from the tangled vines and scratching undergrowth of the jungle.

Sakura reached for Sasuke's hand, their fingers tangling together, and they shared a glance of trepidation before taking the first steps into the clearing. Kakashi followed, as he had always done.

As he always would.

The steps of the Konoha-nin slowed, faltered the closer they got, awed and just perhaps a little afraid of the Village, of what lay within its walls. Even Gai- for once in his life- was silent, his fingers flexing, pulling against the scar tissue left on him by the failed mission to Kiri so long ago.

It was silent, and the sun beat down on them like a brass hammer, the light washing everything in gold. Kakashi tilted his hitai-ate up, exposing the Sharingan.

"I see him," Neji said, fingers clenching, shoulders stiff. "It's Gaara." Hands flickered to kunai, Asuma's fingers curling around his trench knives. The shinobi clustered closer together in an instinctive response, prey before Gaara's pitiless pale eyes. He was standing beside a dark metal gate, traced with green curves of rust, golden chakra- Shukaku's chakra- crawling inside the locking mechanisms.

The jinchuuriki of Shukaku was taller, his blood-red hair bleached a shade lighter than Kakashi remembered. He wore a ragged black shirt and trousers, his arms folded across his chest. Shards of broken glass were piled beside him, clicking like a rattlesnake in warning.

"We have been expecting you."

"Where is he?" Sasuke gritted out, stepping forward. The glass rumbled, sparked with gold, a shard as large as Sasuke's head rising from the pile, hovering just before Sasuke's nose. Anger and no small bit of fear rippled back through the massed shinobi. Gaara's expression didn't change.

"I don't think you are in any position to be making demands here, Uchiha." The shard fell back to the pile with a clink. Gaara grinned, fierce and primal. "And the only reason you are not lying dead on the ground is that Naruto wants you alive." Gaara turned, touched the gate. Yellow chakra flickered on the metal, the hinges groaning like a dying beast as they swung outward. Gaara glanced over his shoulder at them. "But make no mistake: you are unwelcome here."

"What a surprise," Sakura muttered to Sai. They followed, their feet sinking into the sand. Sand- yellow and black and white- was everywhere, piles of glass scattered around. '_A smart decision._' Gaara strode across the ring to the next wall, the sand licking at his feet as he passed like adoring dogs.

"Here they are, Yugito," Gaara said to the woman lounging against the wall of the next ring. She slouched against the stone, her long blonde hair bound back in a ponytail, her blue eyes intent. Yugito was beautiful, despite her sour expression that said, 'Go ahead. Disappoint me.' A kusarigama was in her hand, and Tenten let out a choked cry of anger, making an abortive attempt to grab the weapon from her.

"That's _mine!_"

Yugito raised insolent eyes to Tenten, drawling, "Thought I killed you in Kiri. It's a pity to see you're still alive. I suppose the rest of your merry band of idiots survived as well?" Gai flexed scarred fingers.

"I see they did. How sad." She bared her teeth in something like a smile. "Naruto may want to meet you, but I want every single one of you worms to know this: I do not want you here, and if you harm a hair on his head-" there was the sound of bones clattering from beyond the wall, "-you will pay dearly."

Black chakra raced over the gate, the doors swinging open. They passed through into a graveyard, vines trailing over the worn headstones. The two jinchuuriki flanked them, leading them to the next gate. The Isonade jinchuuriki- a lanky teenage boy with dark hair and eyes- was crouched on the ground, doodling in the dirt. He was shirtless, and a black seal of waves traced over his skinny shoulders. It was unsettling, the reminder of what existed within him: a demon, fierce and unknowable, a beast that cared nothing for human lives or human ways. A sword rested beside him, the hilt well-worn and well-loved.

"Katashi," Gaara said, "do you mind?" The boy made an indecipherable babbling noise, the seven rows of teeth in his mouth gleaming white, membranes flashing back and forth over his eyes. His hand flew to his sword as he unfolded from his crouch, unsheathing the blade as he took a threatening step forward. Kakashi reached up and bit his thumb, ready to summon the nin-dogs. Katashi said something else, the words bubbling with the blood in his mouth.

"I know. We all mind," Yugito cut in, "but at the moment we need you to open the gate." She and Gaara cast a jaundiced eye over the shinobi. "There'll be time for fun later."

Kakashi did _not_ want to get involved in their definition of 'fun'.

The boy- like any normal teenager, which was somehow saddening- sighed, sheathing his sword as slowly as possible and trudging over to his gate, slapping the metal.

"These people are pretty strange," Lee whispered to Tenten, who nodded in emphatic agreement as Katashi dragged them on little footbridges over streams, the shadows of fish flashing black-and-gold in the sunlight. Gaara didn't say a word, but his back- if it was possible- got even stiffer.

The next man was elderly, leaning on a cane, stroking his neat gray beard with a scaled hand. His eyes- like Orochimaru's- were yellow-green, slit black pupils gazing at them from the black mark stretching across his face. He was short and thin, but his expression was alert, and Kakashi knew that getting in a fight with this man would be a very stupid idea.

"Here they are, Noboru," Yugito said.

"So these are the ones from Sarutobi's village," Noboru said. Kakashi frowned, casting back through his memories at the sound of the familiar name. The man's name was Noboru; he had known the Sandaime; he was aged enough to have fought in the First War-

The name flashed into his head immediately, a name spoken in whispers across the land, a curse. He remembered the history books his father had possessed, remembered the pictures of empty homes in a barren village, people- young, old, women, men- fallen in their tracks, killed by an unidentifiable poison. Six hundred had perished in the night.

"Noboru Ito, the Butcher of Kusu?" he asked.

"That old man?" Kiba laughed. "Come on!" Noboru smiled, turning and hobbling to the next gate, opening it for them. They passed through into an area full of abandoned houses and shops, a laboratory in the corner.

"I'm glad my name and my triumph has survived for so long," Noboru said, Kiba's laughter cutting off as he realized just who he was laughing at. Noboru looked over his shoulder at Kiba, his grin now utterly hostile. The 'friendly old man' look was all just a front: a very effective one. But none of them could afford to forget- even for a minute- just who and what they were dealing with.

'_If they have all become so bitter, then what must Naruto be like?_' Would he hate them as all the jinchuuriki seemed to do? Would he be as bleak and uncaring of human pains as these others were?

Kakashi glanced back at the others. Sakura's face was very pale and still, her green eyes wide with anticipation and fear. Sai was glancing about as if they were on some sort of field trip, while Sasuke's fists were clenched, his jaw trembling with fury.

A yell of glee split the air as a blur ran smack into Noboru, the old man wobbling back and forth for a moment. The blur resolved itself into a small child, a girl, her dark hair chopped short, her muddy-green eyes marred by a large black seal around her left eye.

"Hello, Moriko," Noboru said, scooping her up in one arm. The girl- four years old at the most- babbled something about 'Varg' and 'horsies' before catching sight of the interlopers and falling silent, hiding her face in Noboru's shoulder. She peered over his shirt- Hinata and Sakura were making funny faces at her, like they did with any child they came across- and ducked down again.

"She's cute." Chouji joined Hinata and Sakura in making faces before continuing, "How old is she?"

"Almost seven," Noboru said.

"That's not possible," Sakura said, her medic-nin training kicking in. "She's much too small to be seven years old, or even five, without-"

"Severe malnutrition and neglect?" Noboru finished.

"Yeah," Sakura subsided, that avenue of conversation effectively barred, locked, and the key thrown away. Moriko squirmed out of Noboru's grip and ran to the gate, drawing her name in the rust before jumping back, giggling as the gates swung open. Golden grain, waist-high and unnaturally healthy, waved in the breeze beyond, apple trees and climbing tomato vines covering the burnt ruins of houses. Plants were everywhere, even ones that couldn't grow in the jungle.

Moriko pelted into another man, this one very tall, very muscular, and very shirtless.

"Oh my," Hinata said, round-eyed. Ino and Sakura nudged each other appreciatively, grinning. The man narrowed his eyes, glaring at them all for a long moment before turning away. Kurenai swallowed, looking ill, her fingers curling around Asuma's. Harsh crevasses of scar tissue- whip scars- flowed across the man's back like silver-white rivers, the wounds badly healed, some over half an inch deep.

Moriko didn't seem to notice, scaling the man's incredible height like a monkey ascending a tree, the man shifting his shoulders obligingly as she settled on them, chubby fingers curling in his gold hair. The man- Varg, obviously- stomped over to his gate, hands curled into fists, grunting something deeply uncomplimentary as he kicked the gate open, leading them through a small park-like area with trees and rusted generators. The rusty machines were very odd: they seemed completely useless, and it didn't look like any of the jinchuuriki were interested in maintaining them at all.

"Do you hear that?" Kiba tilted his head, Akamaru's hackles rising. His growl resonated through the air.

"Riko!" Moriko squealed in delight, pulling on Varg's hair, the tall man bearing the pain with stolid patience. "Riko-chan!"

"Seventeen newcomers," an eerie voice said from beneath their feet, the earth moving, sliding against itself like tectonic plates, roots tearing apart. "Five women, eleven men." The earth rumbled, yawned like the mouth of hell as a girl clawed her way upright from the soil, tying a ratty blindfold made of brown leather around her eyes. "One dog. I find this transition irritating: their presence _disrupts_ me, and I don't like it and I want them to go _away_!" Hinata stumbled back, wide-eyed. "Probability of killing all the newcomers without incurring casualties: one hundred to one in their favor." Riko flipped her brown hair over her shoulder, drummed dirt-encrusted fingernails on her arms. "I don't like those odds." Her bare toes curled in the grass as she glided forward, muttering obscure equations before winding up at Gaara's side, her hand curling in a particularly threadbare patch in his shirt. Apparently this addiction to contact was routine.

'_I knew the jinchuuriki were going to be strange, but I didn't think _this_ strange._' Despite the jinchuuriki's professions of hatred, they were still- Kakashi glanced behind, at Riko who was leaning into Gaara's side, her steps tottering as if she were about to have convulsions, at Noboru who was limping beside them, at Yugito, cruel and beautiful and broken- tragic figures, terrible pain embodied, all mourning in parallel forms the same tragedy.

Lee and Neji were squabbling about something- well, Lee was attempting to argue, but Neji was having none of it- and Sakura and Sasuke were discussing Naruto in low tones, their fingers entwined, shoulders rubbing against each other. He missed that, the pain of loss surprisingly sharp, missed the long nights around the campfire with his students before they had stopped being his students and became-

Became betrayer and warrior and healer, three people that no longer needed him.

"Riko?" Gaara's voice was very quiet. "Are you going to seize?" The girl- younger than Katashi- was hunched over, only Gaara's arm around her waist keeping her from falling as she babbled in a never-ending blur of words,

"Call of harpy eagle at 72 decibels, frequency 15,000 Hertz, distance 50 meters-" and on and on, information- more information than any human brain could possibly contain- spilling out into the air.

"Is she okay?" Sakura said, stepping forward, green chakra already glowing on her palms. "I can-"

"No." Gaara didn't look at her, focused on helping Riko stumble to the gate. The girl's grimy hand slid across the metal, falling to her side as the gate creaked open. "Go under again."

"I want to stay with you," she slurred as if drunk, her legs going out from under her.

"Go into the tunnels. This is not negotiable."

"Fine!" Riko's brows drew together in a frown before a hole opened and she suddenly disappeared back into the earth without a sound, flowing into the soil like rain. Gaara watched her go, then turned, catching up to the rest. Kakashi watched him, lost. He remembered Gaara in the Chuunin Exams, remembered how alienated he had been from all human emotions, unable to even understand why Gai had stepped in to save Lee. But now Gaara seemed to care for Riko, cared in his own rough, clumsy fashion, a killer trying to learn how to be a brother.

He blinked, turned back as he heard an unfamiliar woman's voice. She was short, stocky, and dark-haired, her dark eyes glittering behind smudged glasses as she bounded around, resembling nothing so much as a very small, very excitable dog. A sword was in her hand, flaming green, the air around it hissing as it moved.

"Shinobu," Yugito said in a long-suffering tone, "these people came to see Naruto, not to have their ears talked off."

"Oh, sorry! By the way, you really insulted my demons by calling them 'unnatural!'" She shook her finger in Neji's face, unafraid. The tall Hyuuga stared, utterly confused. "They're just as natural as you and have every right to be here."

"Sorry," Neji muttered.

"No worries!" Shinobu turned on her heel and led them through the forest of trees, great oaks and ash and willows, the concrete foundations of houses all that was left of a once-thriving village. The demons were everywhere in the shadows, white eyes glittering and full of frightening interest. Kakashi rubbed at his Sharingan, his eye aching from the assault of colorful demonic chakra: gold, black, dark blue, green-yellow, moss-green, white-blue and brown, and now bright green.

And there, there was:

Blood-red and blue, a unique mix as familiar to him as the beating of his heart, as dearly missed as Obito.

Naruto. The breath froze in his chest, the bottom of his stomach sliding into a great black pit, sweat as cold as the winds of war dampening his gloves. Tears- unwanted, unbidden- rose in his eyes as he blinked in a futile bid for composure.

He was standing before the last gate, looking like Yondaime reborn, his hair gleaming gold in the sun, scarred arms folded across his chest. His tattered black vest was open, exposing Yondaime's last great work, the black seal lighter than Kakashi remembered. He looked like some ancient spirit of the forest, world-weary and remote, and Kakashi mourned the loss of the boy he used to know.

Everything was still and silent as the grave, only the sound of the wind moaning through the trees breaking the silence. Sakura took a halting step forward, hand upraised, paused.

Naruto's lips twitched up into an awkward smile, one hand lifting in a nervous wave. "Um… hi? It's nice to see you all."

Joy warred with incredulity on Sasuke's face, and incredulity won.

"'Hi?' '_Hi_'? That's all you have to say after six years? That's all you have to say after abandoning us and leaving Konoha to die and-"

Naruto's blue, blue gaze swung to Sasuke, head tilting. "I'm glad to see you stayed."

"What?" Sasuke's brows knit together in a frown, his fingers curling into fists as he stepped forward, his shoulders vibrating with the urge to take a swing. "What do you mean?"

Kakashi had dreamed of this reunion for so long, pored over it in the nights, built every word and smile and laugh up painstakingly in his mind, taking comfort in it- and now- the grains of his shattered dream slipped through his fingers like sand, like life running out from a comrade.

Nsruto blinked, shrugged. Kakashi got the impression that Naruto- the last remnants of the prankster he had been- was enjoying the chance to put one over on them. "Well, I mean- you didn't go to Orochimaru, did you?" Sasuke jerked back as if he had been slapped, suspicion washing across his face like a wave as he glanced at Sakura.

"How do you know that?" Sakura's voice trembled with longing and newly-sharp sorrow. "You- you weren't there!"

And there, Kakashi thought, there was the true crime, the true betrayal that could never be forgotten, encapsulated in three short words howling with grief.

'_You weren't there._'

He wasn't there for Sandaime's funeral; he wasn't there for the crappy D- and C-rank missions; he wasn't there to fight against the people that had tried to take Sasuke; he wasn't there to cheer on his teammates in the Chuunin Exam; he wasn't there to take the Jounin Exams; he wasn't there to laugh and live and love with them, to make them grow stronger, to make them a family, and because he wasn't there-

Those six years would always be hollow, always ring with the dull thunder of 'what if'?

Something flashed ancient and bloody in the depths of Naruto's eyes, his head tilting as if listening to a conversation far beyond human hearing- a conversation with Kyuubi, red and unknowable and fierce. "Well, I suppose I could tell you now; it can't hurt. Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi-" Kakashi blinked. '_No sensei, and somehow that hurts worse than anything else._'

"-will you come with me?" The formal silence stretched between them, a gulf as wide and deep as the ocean, unable to be crossed. Sasuke answered for them, stepping up beside Naruto, his shoulders stiff as steel. Naruto's glance was amused, his scarred hand splaying out against the gate. Chakra- red and burning and hot as a star- flared on the gate in a replica of the seal on Naruto's belly, the massive sheets of metal swinging inward.

Naruto led them through into a small, circular park-like area, grass- green and short- bending beneath their feet, eerily similar to the grass of home. A giant tree towered overhead, loomed like a mountain, the shadows of its spreading branches encompassing the whole circle. A circle- a circle of trust that had been broken between them, unable to ever be as strong as it once was.

"Follow me," Naruto said, a burst of chakra propelling him thirty feet in the air, above the brown house in the shade of the tree, landing with unnatural silence on the mossy branch. The monsoon rumbled, low and full of hate, a sound like the voice of Kyuubi. They followed, sharing glances of trepidation at Naruto's newfound power, power that they could feel shuddering in their bones.

He was sitting with his elbow resting on his knee, surprisingly still, his face cast in shadow by the clouds and the leaves. Small lines of stress were already making their inexorable mark, his expression changed, older and wearier, the spark of irrepressible joy muted by what he had seen.

"I hope you guys didn't come all this way for a social visit."

Kakashi sat, Sakura and Sasuke beside him.

"You said you'd tell us why?" he trailed off meaningfully. Naruto took the hint.

"Yeah, sure. But it's not going to be easy for you to hear about- especially you." He was staring at Sasuke, the red taint in the back of his eyes back, stronger now.

"I can deal with it," Sasuke gritted out. Naruto shrugged, uncaring. '_So much has been lost._' So much of what they could have been was gone, and now-

These stilted conversations were all they had.

"Suit yourself." He glanced down, drew random glyphs in the moss, the thunder rolling once more. "After I fought Gaara in the Chuunin Exam, the Kyuubi spoke to me. He showed me a vision of what would happen if I stayed, what harm would come to Konoha if I didn't listen. Kitsune can see the future when they gain their ninth tail, and he told me that that moment was a crossroads, a place where there were only two choices, choices that both carried pain and suffering within them. I had to make that choice."

"And you _trusted_ a kitsune?" Sasuke's voice clearly expressed his dubious opinion of Naruto's sanity. Naruto smiled, the shadow of the fox's grin chilling Kakashi to the bone.

"Kitsune are liars, true, but there is one thing they will never lie about: when it comes to preserving their own life, kitsune always tell the truth. Because kitsune- more than any other species in the world- fear death. They fear it because they can live for thousands upon thousands of years, and so stand to lose so much more to death than we can ever comprehend."

"You… you sound so_different_," Sakura said, leaning forward, her face alight with naked yearning. "You couldn't use a word above two syllables back… then."

Naruto laughed, scratched at the back of his head. "Well, you spend six years around Riko, Gaara, and Noboru and tell me you wouldn't pick up some things."

"Enough. Continue," Sasuke interrupted. Naruto glanced at him, his smile all fearsome teeth.

"Okay, then, but remember- you asked for it. I got flashes, most of them about you and what you-" a beat, the last struggles of a world on the edge of the abyss, "-did to us.

"A man named Itachi came, and you tried to fight him and failed miserably, idiot. I have no idea what you were thinking, but I guess you weren't." Sasuke's fists tightened on his ANBU trousers, his eyes flickering red and black. "Then a woman named Tsunade became Hokage."

"Itachi never came," Sasuke said, his voice quiet as a leaf landing on snow. "But Tsunade did become Hokage." Naruto shrugged.

"Doesn't matter to me. Then you betrayed Konoha." Sakura's stifled gasp made him pause for a moment before continuing, his eyes boring into Sasuke. "You ran to Orochimaru because he promised you power, promised you that he would make you strong enough to kill Itachi and take vengeance on him. You _betrayed_ us, you bastard."

"And what about you? Look at what you've done!"

Kakashi knew that they weren't seeing him and Sakura, weren't seeing anyone but each other, all the old pains and scars and unhealed wounds ripping open, floating back to the surface.

Naruto brushed off Sasuke's accusation with nothing more than a irritated flick of his head. "And you took your Chidori, and you shoved it through my shoulder." Naruto's lips twitched in a grimace of phantom pain. Sasuke's breathing was sharp and shallow, his shoulders a line of tension. Naruto's head dropped into his hands, his voice muffled, tinged with grief.

"Then Orochimaru was dead. You killed him, but we couldn't find you. You were gone. You were my _family_, and you were gone, because you wanted power more than you ever wanted me and Sakura and Kakashi." He lifted his head, and his voice was calm and cold and clear.

"You killed-"

And Kakashi knew what was coming, knew it with utter clarity, knew it and wanted to turn away, plug up his ears, pull the sun from the sky so he wouldn't have to watch Naruto's lips move in simple words that crashed into everything he had built with the force of a hurricane,

"-Sakura and Kakashi and took Kakashi's eye." His voice shuddered. "They were holding hands, you fucker, and Sakura was- Sakura was-" he was shattered and childlike as he whispered, "-_smiling_. Because you killed her, and it was you that she loved."

"I- I-" Sasuke stuttered, lost and alone, unable to comprehend, to understand, to ever accept what he could have become. His fingernails were shredding red slashes across his palms, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl of grief. Kakashi couldn't look at him, couldn't look at this man, the closest thing he ever had to a son, and think of him like that. All was silence and the thundering of his heart as the bond between him and Sasuke tore, weakened, frayed just a little bit more.

"The war between Sound and Konoha started. Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji died first. They took Kisame with them. Hinata, Neji, Tenten, Lee, Kiba, and Akamaru went next. Shino was the only survivor." Naruto looked down at his hands. He spoke tonelessly, "He killed himself."

"And Konoha?" Sasuke whispered, unable to meet anyone's eyes. The side of Naruto's mouth curled in a self-loathing grin.

"It fell a year later. Everyone died. Sound and Leaf were destroyed to the last man. Except me." His fingers curled into fists. "I was the only survivor. I failed."

Silence, full of grief, of pain, stretched between them. '_Don't say anything. Don't- don't because I don't think I could bear it please- please-_'

"I went to Akatsuki's hideout. Your head was on a pole. Itachi killed you. I went inside and gave in to the Kyuubi and I slaughtered them, every last one of them." He was grinning, fierce and primal, the unnerving red shadow in his eyes back, the outline of his pupils wavering between animal slits and round. "And then I went outside and died."

The monsoon rumbled, rain beginning to fall around them in thick sheets, their breath clouding in the air. It was as dark as the bottom of the lake outside the Village, the air resounding with the sound of the hammer of the gods pounding the earth with water. Sasuke's head was bowed, his eyes hidden beneath his dark hair, and he was as still as stone, which was somehow more frightening to Kakashi than the expected fury.

"It's not true," Sakura said.

"Sakura-" Obito's eye was burning with tears, tears for Sasuke, confronted with what he could have become, tears for Sakura, wounded so deeply by the knowledge that Sasuke could have- had- killed her.

"_It's not!_ It's not, it's not-"

"It is, okay?" Naruto snarled, leaning forward, his voice full of longing and grief and rage, "It's completely true! Sasuke left us and he killed you and- _God, _don't you _understand?_ This is why I left, why I had to leave, because if I stayed you all would have died and-"

His fist thudded into the branch, bark flying out around them as he continued, anguished, "-and I had had to make that choice, and I chose the one that would let you live. I never- not for one moment- left because I wanted to."

'_No._' His stomach was roaring with bile, with sickness at the fact that they had all misjudged him for so long, had been so willing to believe the worst of him. '_No, no, no._ _I've been so blind._' He wanted to vomit.

Naruto stared at them, wild-eyed, his harsh breathing crackling in the silence between them. "I had to." He crumpled in on himself like a ball of wadded-up paper, mirroring Sasuke, light and shadow, two men that were destined to wound each other.

"So now you know." He collapsed back against the trunk, his eyes bruised with exhaustion. "Now you know. And tell me- if you can't forgive me, at least tell me why you're here."

Kakashi struggled to find his voice, said, his words cracking with sorrow,

"We've come to ask for the jinchuuriki's help. Konoha is at war with the other Great Villages, and will not survive without you and the others' assistance. We are even prepared to offer amnesty."

Naruto's lip twitched into a sneer. "'_Help?_' You want us to help you? You want me to convince them to _help _you? Why should they help a village that betrayed the old jinchuuriki, a species that created the demons, who starved a six-month-old child half to death, who locked a six-year-old boy in a cell for nineteen years, who tried to assassinate a child who only wanted love, who experimented on a six-year-old girl for no reason but curiosity?" His voice was thick with scorn, "How am I supposed to convince them to help you?"

Sakura jerked back, her eyes wide and wounded. Sasuke raised his head, searching futilely for evidence that this tired man in front of them was an impostor, was not the Naruto they had known. Because Naruto had been joy, and now-

There was nothing.

"What_happened_ to you?" Sasuke breathed. "What happened to your dream to be Hokage?"

Naruto's voice was ancient with weariness. "That died the moment I found Moriko lying in her own filth."

"Then what did Yondaime die for?" Kakashi asked.

Naruto glanced down, raked his fingers through his hair, sighed, then. "I don't know. But I'll ask the jinchuuriki for their opinions. But-" his smile was heartbreaking, "I think I'd like to be alone, now."

"Of course," Kakashi murmured, collecting Sakura- still in shock- and Sasuke- his thin hands trembling with stress- and shepherding them out of the tree.

They left Naruto there, a dark shape in the rain, utterly remote from them. Kakashi turned back to look one last time, but couldn't see-

_For once in his life, he couldn't see-_

Whether the wetness on Naruto's cheeks was rain or tears.

* * *

**A/N:** All reviews are loved. Questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. 


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N:** One of my wonderful reviewers, 'nwfairy', drew a lovely picture of Moriko, and another awesome reviewer, 'luzopi' drew a superb picture of the bijuu! They are linked in my profile. All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

* * *

_Anything at any price__  
All of this for you__  
All the spoils of a wasted life  
All of this for you  
All the world has closed her eyes  
Tired faith all worn and thin  
For all we could have done  
And all that could have been_  
- 'And All That Could Have Been' by Nine Inch Nails

* * *

Shino watched as Naruto led Hatake, Haruno, and Uchiha behind the metal gates, turning away as he felt Kiba nudge him.

'_Well. This is… tense._'

The jinchuuriki were scattered around, gazing at them with distrust. Yugito was draped over a nearby rock like a cat in a sunbeam, her mouth in a thin, pale line of irritation. Tenten was gazing at her kusarigama with naked yearning; how _stupid_ of her, to still be so emotionally invested in a weapon that had been lost for six years.

Katashi circled them like a beast on the hunt, unsheathing his sword and resheathing it with nervous flicks of his thumb, his dark eyes skipping over them.

Lee broke the silence in characteristic loudness. "Nii-san, I would like you to know," he bellowed in Shino's ear, "-that I bear you no hard feelings! I only hope that we may have a rematch some… time in the…" he trailed off under the jinchuuriki's cold gazes, glancing down at his toe and scuffing it in the dirt like a chastened child.

'_So much for Lee's version of diplomacy,_' Shino thought, resisting the urge to retire beneath one of the oaks to escape from the monsoon that hung heavy and threatening overhead. Thunder was groaning in the depths of the clouds, dry lightning illuminating them all as wasted, pale skulls. A peal of thunder, louder than a thousand bombs, shattered the gloomy silence, the bugs scuttling over his skin in agitation.

The earth shuddered beneath their feet, pitched, heaved like the deck of a ship far out at sea, small hummocks curving up, sliding across the grass like children playing beneath a sheet, Chouji stumbling, falling as the restless earth leaped beside him, chasms opening and closing in the space of a second, the shinobi of Konoha going to all fours to keep from falling. Akamaru barked wildly, his tail pounding the earth as his blunt claws dug in.

The jinchuuriki's expressions were full of resignation and no small amount of sorrow, the Sand-nin- Gaara's- head bowed, sand fluttering on his skin like the wings of a thousand birds, his tired eyes brimful of pain. They stood on the writhing ground as if used to the sudden uproar, their lack of concern instilling confidence in the others. But no- lines of stress were around their mouths, Shinobu's smile a touch too plastic.

'_No. They are concerned. Very concerned; they just don't want to show it._'

"What was _that_?" Hinata asked as the trembling stopped, brushing the dirt off her knees and tucking her hair behind her ears. Shino glanced at Kiba and Akamaru: both standing, Kiba muttering darkly to his partner. He relaxed, the tension in his shoulders seeping away. His team was fine.

'Fine', of course, was a relative measure. _He_ was not fine, especially when he watched them. Kiba was fussing over Hinata, brushing imperceptible specks of dirt off her clothes, grinning as Hinata, blushing furiously, thanked him for his efforts with a kiss. Jealousy, petty and shameful, twisted in hot black ropes of bitterness inside him. A _good_ teammate wouldn't begrudge them their happiness; a _good _teammate wouldn't be so childish as to think that they had been abandoned.

He wasn't a good teammate. The kikai hummed inside him in a sorry attempt at comfort, the buzz as familiar to him as sunrise and sunset.

Shikamaru, to no one's surprise, understood the odd occurrence first. "You mentioned seizures?" Gaara's eyes, green as venom, flicked up, met Shikamaru's. "I'd assume that was one of them," Shikamaru finished dryly.

"You would be correct in that assumption," Noboru said with a sardonic sneer, sidestepping as another chasm opened, a pale arm reaching up, dirt-smudged fingers- still trembling- brushing Gaara's foot. He looked down, knelt, fished out a dirty notebook and a stub of a pencil, opening it to a page, already filled with numbers. Shino squinted: they were ratios, like for probability or-

Gaara wrote the ratio the girl- Riko- dictated in a hoarse voice, the numbers wavery with grief, one-to-twenty-five-

Shino's lips formed an unspoken 'oh' Understanding, crystalline with sudden pity for the girl, flooded him.

"Those are probability ratios, aren't they?"

Gaara closed the notebook, turned to face him, his expression poisonous. Shinobu butted in. Shino spared her a thought of thanks for saving him from Gaara's ire.

"Yeah. Riko-" her hands fluttered as she tried to think of words, "-likes to know things. She likes to be in control of everything. And so she-" her lips twitched into a pathetic attempt at a grin, "-she recalculates the odds of her death after each seizure."

"Shinobu," Yugito bit out. "You might want to curb your tongue before you end up telling them all of our weaknesses." Her ice-blue eyes were disdainful of them all, as if they were particularly irritating insects intruding upon her territory.

"Well, I'm _sorry_ but- hey, are those kikai?"

Shino blinked, looked back at her. Her eyes were fixed on the bugs crawling on his skin, filled with the fanaticism of an entomologist confronted with a new species.

"Yes."

"Oh, wow, I've never seen one-" Shinobu bounded over to him in a flurry of black and green, grabbing his hand. The contact was a shock, a frisson of electricity skittering up and down his spine. He couldn't remember the last time someone outside his family or his team had touched him: most of Konoha's citizens, while respectful of someone who was a walking hive of deadly insects, were also disgusted by the idea.

"Shinobu," Noboru said in resignation, "can you save your inquiries until after we move to a drier spot? The rain's almost here."

"We probably should get out from under the trees," Chouji whispered to Shikamaru, glancing fearfully at the lightning rippling like the bones of the clouds over their brooding, slate-gray surfaces.

"It is…" Varg finally spoke in a voice rusty with disuse, his brows drawing together in a frown as he struggled to find words.

"Okay," he finished as the rains roared down upon them, lightning- impossibly, insanely- curving over their heads, through the trees and back up into the sky, dissipating with a twitch of Varg's fingers.

"Okay, let's go to the clinic," Shinobu said, turning- her palm, rough with calluses from her sword, still in Shino's hand- and leading him and others to a low-slung, wooden building. The bright eyes of demons watched them from the gloom, Ino making tiny noises of discontent as a few of them slithered beneath her feet.

Shinobu turned at the muttered curses, her eyes wide with hurt. Shino sympathized, understanding- this, he understood more than anything else in the world- the blow to the gut that came from knowing that other people found one of the most important things in your life to be disgusting, repugnant, unnatural.

Because then it meant that they found _you_ unnatural.

"You… said you wanted to see the kikai?"

"Oh… yes." She let go of his hand with a brief smile. "I'd like to, but… Yugito, is Naruto-?"

"He's staying in the ninth ring. The ones he took with him are returning now." The other woman was shifting from foot to foot on the porch, uncoiling her kusarigama's chain, squinting at the clouds with a disgruntled expression.

Shinobu tilted her head as one of the demons slithered its way up her leg, the inky-black, amorphous blob flowing over itself and leaving not a trace behind, the tiny creature finally settling on her shoulder. It chattered, the noise calling to mind thoughts of dead men's bones, white eyes blinking. Shinobu nodded, stroked her index finger along the demon's spiny back. Shino got the impression that if the creature had been a cat, it would have been purring.

"Naruto wants us," she said to the others. Noboru stared.

"He thinks we can just leave these outsiders alo-"

"See, he knew you'd say that- he called you paranoid, by the way- and said that we can trust them." Noboru looked askance at the Konoha-nin, his mustache twitching, before he settled, shrugging.

"If Naruto says so, then I'll believe him."

The jinchuuriki trooped out of the room, Katashi the last one to leave. He glared at them all, baring his bloodstained teeth in warning before turning on his heel and following the others, the rickety wooden door shutting behind him.

There was an awkward silence.

Shino took the liberty of glancing around the single room. There were trays of makeshift tools, hand-drawn diagrams of hypothetical surgeries and procedures tacked to the walls. Papers, filled with writing in a tiny, precise hand, overflowed from the corners.

The door banged as Sasuke stormed in, his jaw set, eyes flickering schizophrenically from red to black and back again. His head was down, dark hair hiding his expression from view, but his back, his shoulders- they were like springs that had once been coiled and were now stretched beyond repair, exhaustion taking its toll, every movement sluggish. He brushed off their inquiries without a second glance, going straight back to the corner, where he leaned against the wall and refused to meet any of their gazes.

Kakashi followed, his lone visible eye rimmed with red, stalking after Sasuke, as sudden and jerky as a wind-up doll, nothing like the supernatural grace that he shared with his former students, a grace and fluidity that could only come from ANBU. He would not meet their eyes, wouldn't look at Sasuke, the dark eye- wild with regret and tormented with grief- sliding over the Uchiha, over them all, as if he wasn't seeing _them_ at all, only clockwork facsimiles.

Sakura leaned against Kakashi, stumbling, her hand trailing on the wall as if she would fall without its support. Her throat worked, a scream of stress and fear caught in spiderwebs of propriety, her limbs racked with fine tremors, her lips moving without sound. She settled beside Sasuke, collapsing to the floor and drawing her knees to her chest, not even the myriad medical texts enough to distract her from her silent repetitions of 'not true'.

Her sodden dress- this Shino noticed with no small bit of foreboding- was the color of fresh blood.

* * *

Naruto rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, sighing. Of all the times for Konoha to show up, _demanding_ his help, why now? Things had been going so well: Riko was seizing less, Katashi's obsessive hoarding of food had eased, Noboru had stopped stringing tripwires in his doorway every night-

Hell, even _Gaara_ had laughed once or twice in the past few months.

He let his head thump back against the tree, gazing morosely at the raindrops spattering his feet as the onslaught of water dwindled, becoming a warm drizzle. '_Storm's passing. It always does._'

But this storm- the storm of war, laid at his feet by the people he had left behind- would not.

He dug his fingers into his hair, groaning, wanting more than anything else in the world to throw the Konoha shinobi out of the Village, his idyllic little world where he was normal, where life was happy, where food was easy and joy was everywhere.

But the worst thing about it all was that he already knew his own decision And he wondered what that said about him, what it meant that he- foolishly, stupidly- still attached such feelings to a village that he'd left six long years ago, left to save it from himself. '_It means you're a sentimental fool, like Gaara always says._'

And the price- _God_, the price had been so high. But he would do anything, pay any price, suffer any shame, if it meant that Konoha- that the people he loved- would live to fight another day.

But what was better? To spend the rest of his life in the Village, content with his family, without pain, without sorrow or work? Or to go back, to fight- _and maybe die_- for a village, that he still- stupidly, foolishly, _humanly_- loved?

The answer was there, had always been there, an answer carved in his heart like stone. '_You sacrificed everything for Konoha once. You can do it again._'

"I really am a fool," he breathed into the dripping rain.

The branch shuddered, bending beneath their weight as the other jinchuuriki landed, Varg with an arm around Noboru's waist, Moriko astride his shoulders. Gaara's brow was furrowed in irritation; he jerked his head, waterlogged sand flying off his body and hitting the tree with a wet slap.

They strode down the branch, plopping and sprawling out into their respective places, Katashi shoving his way in front of Varg, the Raijuu jinchuuriki's bulk protecting him from the storm. Riko picked her way over the moss, nose wrinkled, before she found a suitable spot and deigned to sit.

"So," Shinobu said, sprawling out beside Noboru on her stomach, legs waving in the air, "what's the situation?"

Naruto folded his arms behind his head, shrugging. "Nothing much, really." '_Unless you count a war involving practically every country on the entire continent."_

"Liar," said Gaara. "You always put your arms behind your head when you're stressed about something."

"And I doubt these people would have come all the way from Konoha for 'nothing much, really'," Noboru said.

"Fine, fine, you caught me." He scratched the back of his head, grinning, and sobered. '_How am I supposed to tell them?_'

"The continent is at war." As soon as the words left his mouth, Noboru sat up straighter, yellow eyes boring into him; Yugito's jaw clenched, black fire flickering on her fingers; Katashi tried to hide a grin of excitement, but failed miserably.

"Explain," Gaara said.

"They- Kakashi, Sasuke, Sakura, my old teammates- said that Iwa, Kumo, Suna, and Kiri have gone to war with Konoha. And not just them: they've dragged the vassal villages into it, too, and the minor villages are getting involved."

"And let me guess," Yugito's words dripped venom, "they want our assistance."

"Yeah. They're offering amnesty, which as far as I can tell means that all my crimes against Konoha are forgiven, and we could go and live there."

The others glanced at each other, expressions blank. '_I'm surprised they're even giving any thought to it at all._' But now came the hard part, the part that reached inside him and tore at his heart with shame for his village, the place he had sacrificed everything for.

Even his place, the niche in those few people's hearts that he had struggled and clawed his way into, had bled for and fought for and had in the end given up.

"It wouldn't be the first time," he forced out, the words burning his throat with the bile of guilt as he said them. "A long time ago, when Konoha was new, it offered the same thing to the jinchuuriki." He didn't look at them, staring at the moss.

Shinobu was very still. "Did they take it?"

It hurt to say it, to imagine the jinchuuriki of old, naïve, innocent, believing in the promise of a new world, a better world. "Yes."

"And what happened to them?"

'_That world never came._'

He didn't want to say it, didn't want to believe that Konoha- _his village, his dream, his everything, the place he had loved more than life itself_- could have done such a thing.

But Konoha was a village of shinobi, first and foremost, and shinobi were good at betrayal.

The jinchuuriki had to know, had to be able to make an informed decision, because if he tried to make them decide the way he wanted them to…

Then what kind of a leader was he?

Shame clogged his throat, burned black and bitter in him as he whispered,

"They were betrayed. The promise was broken, and they were thrown away, useless tools."

Silence, broken only by the dripping of raindrops over leaves and wood. And for a moment, it seemed like he could forget that the people he had left behind were in the Village, that war was looming on the horizon, that all-too-soon all of this would end.

"So you need to make a decision: go, fight, and maybe die, or stay here and live."

Katashi narrowed his eyes. "What about you? What're you going to do?"

Naruto snorted. "Nice try, but I'm not going to tell you. I want you all to make your own decisions, without my influence."

"A wise move," Noboru said.

"Yeah, well, you know me: I'm chock-full of wisdom." A ripple of quiet laughter cascaded through the gathering. Naruto sat for a little while, enjoying the presence of these people, his family, enjoying the certainty that this was where he belonged.

The moment was tinged with grief, for he knew that very soon it would all end, that very soon he would sacrifice his place and his family and his friends for the second time, and the agony would be just as sharp as the first time.

"I'm going to let you guys hash it out, okay?" He stood, groaning as his back protested, and waved goodbye, launching himself off the tree and down in a perfect arc, funneling chakra to his feet and legs to take the strain as he landed.

The mud squelched beneath his feet as he hit the ground. He straightened, ran fingers through soggy hair, picked at his vest, the cloth clinging to his skin, and swallowed. His throat was dry, his palms sweaty, and he felt hot and headachy and thoroughly miserable.

'_You're just running away,_' an insidious voice whispered, '_you'll have to confront them sooner or later._'

"I'm not running away," he muttered, turning away from the open gate and slipping inside the cool darkness of the house, passing by Varg's carvings, Moriko's paintings, Gaara's glass sculptures.

"I'll talk to them. Just… later, rather than sooner."

He hoped they wouldn't be too cruel.

* * *

To Gaara's surprise, Noboru spoke first. "I vote to stay."

"Why?" Shinobu said, putting her hands out in hasty placation as Noboru's venomous gaze swung to her. "Just playing devil's advocate!" Noboru snorted, rubbing at hands seamed with scars.

"Why should we fight for those who hate us? Why should we sacrifice ourselves," he said, "when we have already given so much?" He grimaced, shifting on the hard branch. His hips- broken in the First War- still pained him- Gaara knew this, having seen him hobbling down the hall in the middle of the night, unable to sleep for agony- and even Shinobu's talent couldn't heal him. Noboru blinked, the memories of dead comrades swarming about him, invisible, but no less heavy. "Why should we fight for a cause we are not part of? We are not lords or Kages; we did not give offense or sign the declaration or mobilize the soldiers.

"I know war. I have fought in the First War, fought for Numagakure's dream, a dream I did not share." The others couldn't meet his gaze, looking away. Even Riko- Riko who understood less of humanity than he, who had spent six years spurning it, did- turned from him, giving him the dignity of knowing that his tears went unseen.

"But the fools of Numagakure believed, believed in the speeches and the songs and the leaders crying for liberty. With all their hearts, they believed, and so threw themselves against the walls of Konoha, thousands, storming the walls, mown down like dead grass in a field." The blurred light of the falling sun lay gold and heavy on the dripping leaves. Noboru's voice trembled. "They had waged the war of monarchs."

He was so aged, in that moment- he looked even older than Chiyo, the oldest person in Suna- the weight of every one of the soldiers entombed in earth resting on his frail shoulders.

"And they died the death of pawns. Nothing comes from war: no goodness, no honor, no glory, no wisdom. War is pain and futility and horror. War makes you see things, know things that no one can ever understand." His smile was heartrending. "When I was thirteen I saw a man get his stomach blown out and we had to tape a cooking bowl to his stomach to keep his intestines inside him, because our medic-nin died from a stray piece of shrapnel taking off the top of his head. I watched him scream and claw at the ground and beg for us to kill him, and we couldn't because he was still useful.

"He cursed us as we strapped bombs to him and made him walk into the enemy's camp. He killed them, and his family got a medal and a letter from the lord, saying that he died bravely."

Noboru snorted. "He didn't.

"More than that- the arrogance of this village, to ask _us_ for help; help that it _denied_ our predecessors, who fought for Konoha, for a promise broken by Konoha.

"They do not deserve our help. More than that- none of us deserve to go back to war. Isn't that what Naruto gave us? Lives free from battle, from being seen as nothing more than a tool, a means to achieve victory? Why should we go back to that?"

"We should go because this war's going to affect history," Katashi fired back, leaning forward, eyes wide. "This war's going to _mean_ something! I mean, you guys had the First, Second, and Third Wars to give your generation meaning-" he gestured to the older jinchuuriki, who sat very still, according his words all the respect that an elderly person's would receive. Naruto had been very insistent on that point, Gaara remembered. Naruto was the only person he had ever met who thought that even the choices of the small should be respected. Perhaps that was why the jinchuuriki loved him so.

"-and what do we have? Nothing. Our generation means nothing. But if we go, then our lives will mean something, because we'll have affected history!" He glanced around, and finally said, "We can't stay here for the rest of our lives, you know. Eventually, we'll all die of old age, and then what? Moriko and Riko will live here for the rest of their lives, surrounded by our ghosts? That's not fair to them." Frustrated, he tugged on his dark hair, hazel eyes bright.

"And if we don't go, what does that say about us? If we stay here and refuse to help Konoha, just because of what it did sixty years ago… isn't that kind of petty?"

"Why do you want to go, Katashi? Do you truly believe what you say, or do you just want to fight a war? Do you just want to go and be able to say that you did?" Yugito asked in an attempt at gentleness. Katashi's jaw clenched, before he glanced away, muttering,

"Both, I guess."

"You are young, yet," Yugito said, her face cast in shadow, her cat's eyes gleaming pale blue, "and those who are young believe themselves to be immortal. That is the tragedy of war: that those who die- the young- never truly understood that it could happen to them." She tried to smile, the expression ghastly. "I have walked the battlefields of war. I have trod over the bones of thousands and listened to their last whispers floating across the river of death."

A cloud passed over the sun, darkness covering the land. She glanced down, and black fire burned like starless night on her fingers. Her voice shuddered with the voices of the thousand nameless dead.

"They went out to die for liberty and decency and glory, they went out to die for the speeches and the parades and the monuments. But only the dead know if those things are worth dying for." Her lips twitched into a grim smile. "And only I can speak for the dead.

"Did any of them say 'I'm glad I'm dead because death is better than slavery'? Did any of them say 'I died for decency and it's better than being alive'? Did any of them say 'I've been rotting for two years in the earth in silence and darkness, but see how lovely it is to die for your native land'? And you'd think, wouldn't you, that if you died you'd spend the last few seconds thinking about what you died for, because a life is a terrible thing to lose.

"These young people, these pathetic sacrifices, did any of them die thinking of liberty and decency and glory?"

Her voice was steel scraping on glass.

"You're goddamn right they didn't.

"They died wailing for their mothers. They died howling like little children. They died with their hearts screaming for one more look at their lover's face. They died sobbing, and every single one of them died thinking the same thing:

"I want to live. I want to live."

Gaara took a breath, and spoke.

"We need to go." He held up a hand to forestall the inevitable questions and continued, "Something about this is not adding up. Why would all four of the great villages suddenly declare war? Why would villages that have no reason to engage in such an expensive enterprise decide to do so simultaneously? Shinobi are stubborn and disagreeable by nature, ill-suited to alliances. Most of the alliances made between villages for the past hundred years have been worthless and were broken within months.

"Why, then, does this one- a complex one made between nations that hate each other- stand? Something is very wrong."

"I agree," Shinobu said. "And anyway, Naruto's going."

"How do you know that?" Katashi asked.

"Oh _please,_" Shinobu rolled her eyes, "you know how he is. Once someone's his friend, he's willing to do anything for them. And these people seem like they were pretty important friends. You saw the way he was with them: it was obvious that he still cared about them."

Riko stirred, lifting her head. "I believe that everyone's choice is their own. Only you can decide whether to go or stay." She smiled, aged and weary, time weighing on her shoulders.

"But if we use the people of the past as an excuse for the present… if we ignore their request for aid… if we stand by and watch while Konoha falls, killing thousands…

"Then doesn't that make us no better than the people who stood by and ignored our cries for help as we became jinchuuriki?"

The cloud over the sun passed by, and all that was left was the silence and the golden light over the Village, the graves and the ruins and the uprooted trees like the bones of the earth.

Gaara glanced around. "We have time to decide," he said. "But don't make this decision lightly."

Varg was listening, absorbing every word they said; while no one knew just how much Varg truly understood, he knew enough. Moriko was doodling in the moss, uncaring, innocent, ignorant of such ugly things that sent a man to be wounded for no great reason, that sent all the young people away to kill each other.

He wished she would always remain that way.

He knew she wouldn't.

* * *

It was evening, and the stars were just beginning to shine. The jinchuuriki had served dinner- Noboru had insisted on it, saying that forcing visitors to provide their own food was the height of bad manners- although they still glared at the visitors every chance they had.

Sakura set down her plate of unidentifiable vegetables, pushing it over to Chouji. Her stomach felt leaden, and she wanted to scream at the world that continued to turn, at the lives that went on around her while she watched them, knowing that they had died in the terrible future that Naruto saved them from. The other Konoha shinobi- so lucky not to know, not to feel the pressing guilt- hadn't been told, she and Sasuke and Kakashi keeping the knowledge that Naruto gave them to themselves for a little while longer, trying to find a way to deal with it, to assimilate it without destroying themselves.

She would tell the others later, later when she didn't feel like screaming and tearing down a tree at the very thought of what could have been.

Naruto.

He was avoiding the Konoha-nin- had avoided them for the entire evening- hiding behind the impenetrable wall of the jinchuuriki. Any of their attempts to talk to him had been rebuffed. Katashi seemed all-too-eager to wave his sword in their faces.

Now they weren't even allowed to _try_. The older shinobi had finally ordered them to leave him alone, because getting his agreement to come with them, to save Konoha, was more important than finding out how much- and how painfully- he had changed.

She glanced up, saw Sasuke hunched in the shadows of the fire, separate from the rest, and moved to join him. He shifted obligingly, but would not meet her eyes.

Still, he seemed surprisingly normal for the moment, all things considered. He would deal with his pain later, alone, in silence, the same way he always did. She used to hate that about him, always wanting to share his pain and ease the burden, but now she accepted his flaws and his gruffness and his past.

But this new thing- this looming dark potential inside him, the potential that had been unleashed at Orochimaru's hand- the fact that he had _killed _her-

She didn't know if she could accept that.

If she could ever love him the same way.

She dug her hands into her short-cropped hair, strove for normalcy, to keep the shuddering tremor out of her voice as she said, the words a pathetic imitation of happier times,

"What're you thinking about?"

Sasuke was frozen, his face expressionless, his eyes unblinking, a perfect statue of ice and calmness. A perfect façade. It crumbled as soon as he spoke.

"The past."

"What part?"

Sasuke's mouth twisted in a miserable smile.

"Don't you remember? Remember when we fought Zabuza, together, three snot-nosed brats that had no idea what they'd gotten themselves into and managed to get out of it? Remember when we fought together in the Forest of Death?"

Sasuke's voice was full of the tears he would never allow himself to shed, his eyes fixed on Naruto's face, lit in gold by the firelight as he smiled, elbowing Gaara in the side as he stole the last bowl of soup.

"And remember the bell test? Remember when we were all willing to sacrifice our chance at being shinobi for each other, because that was when- when we were a team?"

Sakura blinked away the tears, reaching out with infinite slowness- '_Please don't draw away now. Please don't leave me here alone with my guilt, with the tatters of my broken dreams_,' – to lay her hand, gently, asking nothing, assuming nothing, over Sasuke's. He flinched, almost shook her off, but subsided like a beast too tired to fight. His breathing rattled like the last gasps of a dying soldier, hard knots of regret and guilt and bitter sorrow evident in the trembling of his hand beneath her own.

"Remember when we would sit together around the campfire, and Naruto would cook and I'd insult it and you'd try and mediate the conflict and it never, ever worked?"

She was too numb to cry for all the _time_, the beautiful, glorious seconds and hours and days and years that they had missed, that now could never be. Her voice was tiny and shattered.

"I remember."

Sasuke folded in on himself, a rickety puppet without strings, resting his forehead on his knees. His voice, muffled- and she was glad for that, glad that she would never know if he was crying or not- came to her, childlike, the whisper of a grieving boy, orphaned twice over, forever searching for what had been lost.

"Why-" and there, a thousand days of happiness that had never been, screaming in the stillness between words, the agony of all that could have been welling in her throat in a stifled sob.

"Why can't we go back to that?"

She bit her lip, staring at Naruto as he moved among the jinchuuriki, his new family, at home, at peace, secure in himself and his place in the world in a way that he had never-_ had never been able to be_- in Konoha.

'_He's moved on, and yet-_' her eyes burned, and yet no tears broke through the numbness, '_-we still feel the same._'

"Is there even-" Sasuke's voice shuddered, horrific to her, who had always seen him strong and silent, drawing comfort from his distance, "-any room for us in him anymore?"

She swallowed, throat raw from tears rasping against itself, and whispered into the darkness of the empty present,

"I don't know."

* * *

**Annotations**

'_They had waged the war of monarchs, and they died the deaths of pawns._' – Lines from the poem 'The Battle of Liege' by Dana Burnet, about the World War One battle of Liege in Belgium.

Some of Yugito's dialogue is from _Johnny Got His Gun_ by Dalton Trumbo. It is the story of a soldier in World War One who wakes up in a hospital without his arms, legs, eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. The book is one of the great anti-war novels of the last century.

* * *

**A/N:** Reviews are loved and fed biscotti cookies!


	21. Chapter 21

**A/N**: I've received some more wonderful fanart! They are two colored versions of 'The Nine Bijuu' by luzopi, with one colored by nwfairy and the other one by scarblade. Links are in my profile. Go and marvel at them! I apologize for the long wait for this chapter; real life tends to intrude at the most inopportune moments.

* * *

_Some things will never change_

_They stand there looking backwards_

_Half unconscious from the pain_

_They may seem rearranged_

_In the backwater swirling, there is_

_Something that'll never change _

- 'Backwater' by the Meat Puppets

* * *

Neji poked at the fire, the coals crumbling apart like dry bones on a battlefield at the slightest touch. The others were ranged in varying positions around it, their faces etched with exhaustion, spattered with mud, their eyes uniformly hollow. The air was full of the eerie wails of eagles and monkeys, and red eyes gleamed from the trees.

The jinchuuriki had left them to camp in Shinobu's ring, fleeing into a house that he had glimpsed before the gates closed with a final, terrible 'thump'.

His head ached with the memories of their sharp-toothed smiles.

Hinata was leaning her head on Kiba's shoulder, her eyes closed, fingers entwined with Kiba's. Ino's head was pillowed on Chouji's belly, Chouji himself gazing with rapt eyes at the stars.

The sky was a true black, here, not the dulled blue of home, where electric lights leeched the stars' fire. The constellation of the Hunter was low in the sky, the Hunter's faithful Hound halfway beneath the trees.

Neji's lip curled; a faithful hound, resolute and loyal to its master and friends to the very last breath. Naruto had been that, once- or at least Neji had believed him to be. But he had been wrong, naïve, and Naruto had been nothing like what he thought.

The betrayal still rankled in his heart like a poisonous wound.

"What do you think of them?" Asuma asked, his brown eyes tinted whiskey-gold by the firelight.

"I think they're frightening, personally," Chouji said, raising his head and dislodging Ino. She waved a hand at his head in an attempt at a slap, missing by a mile. Ino had always been lazy, Neji thought. She was amicable enough on missions, but outside of them she was difficult to get along with.

"Especially that Noboru guy," Lee commented. Neji turned to him, disturbed by the lack of an exclamation point. "I mean, _him_ being the Butcher of Kusu? He's so _tiny_! If I couldn't defeat him with one kick, I'd run two hundred laps around Konoha."

"Appearances can be deceiving," Shino said, a moth- its delicate antennae covered in white hairs, like dust on a spiderweb, waving- settling on his outstretched hand. Shino met the multifaceted eyes, and grunted in irritation. "The jinchuuriki have settled down for the night in the house; nothing interesting to report."

"They probably know you were watching them, and didn't do anything interesting to throw you off," Shikamaru said, rolling his eyes. Shino glanced in his direction, glasses flashing and promising future pain.

"That's not the issue," Lee butted in, "the issue is that we're stuck out in the jungle with the Butcher of Kusu, who killed-"

"We know the statistics, Lee," Tenten said from where she lay sprawled on her stomach, repairing one of her smaller scrolls. "One day, all six hundred people of Kusu are going about their daily business, making weaponry to support Konoha in the war effort. The next day, all six hundred are dead from an unknown poison. Noboru Ito, fifteen years old, is blamed."

Neji had seen the pictures; every genin had, the faces locked in wails of agony, clawed fingers dug into the ground as if to crawl into it and escape the poison creeping over their nervous system and burning it away like soldiers salting the earth. The eyes blue with decay gazing upward toward salvation, the children held to their parents' chests in a desperate attempt at life.

The nihilism, the absolute disregard for human life, still sickened him.

"Gaara seems to have become much more dangerous," he said, unease at the memories of acid-green eyes and a rusty, half-sane voice squeezing his chest like a vise. "I don't remember him ever being able to control glass."

"H-his chakra output incr- increased, too," Hinata added, opening her eyes and meeting his over the fire. Kiba's arm curled tighter, the two of them molding against each other. Neji had his reservations about the pairing at first, but Kiba had made Hinata happy again after Naruto left; he had been the only thing to make Hinata smile, and that was worth everything.

"They're so… _mean_," Ino said, her brow wrinkled as she searched for better words. "They don't care who we are, or why we're here; they would kill us as soon as look at us. That Katashi boy: did you _see_ the way he smiled?"

Neji had seen. Serrated teeth and a mouth full of blood, lips cut in masochistic attempts to speak, every word slurred with hatred and pain, a smile that promised torment. Eyes hollow with years of solitude and scrounging in the dirt for scraps of food.

"Can you blame them?"

Kakashi slid into the circle without a sound, his pale face pinched, his dark eye rimmed with red from tears that hadn't fallen in ten years or more. He tilted his head- Neji was reminded once more of the stories he had heard, of the fearsome Copy Ninja that was more wolf than man and so far away from human- the cloth of his mask moving as he smiled a sick, sad little smile.

"Naruto told us some things. He told us that they found Moriko lying in her own filth, almost dead from starvation. He said that one of the male jinchuuriki was six years old when he was locked in a cell and kept there for nineteen years. The jinchuuriki, from his words, seem to have been used solely as weapons or as scapegoats." Kakashi turned his gaze to the fire, crouching as if even now he couldn't uncoil.

"They know enough of pain. Why should they fight for us? What reason do they have?"

"Because it's the right thing to do," Chouji said. Simple, kind Chouji, who saw everything as right and wrong, who would lay down his life for whatever cause he thought right, who was destined to always be disappointed in mankind.

He wondered if that optimism- if Chouji himself- would survive the coming storm.

"You're assuming they see it that way," Shikamaru said from where he sat with his chin on his knees, eyes half-lidded. "You assume they're human and understand human morals."

"They're human," Tenten said, sitting up, her eyes alight. "They bleed- that woman, Nii, bled when Neji hit her- they feel pain, they feel joy. What makes them not human? Can we even say they're not?"

"They're not human because they don't see the world the same way we do! They don't have emotions the way we do; they don't have the same morals; for God's sake, that Noboru man seems to _enjoy_ the fact that he killed six hundred people!" Shikamaru punched the ground in aggravation.

"Emotions?" Sai said, making Neji jump. '_How does he blend in like that?_' Sai tilted his head, his mouth compressed into a thin line. "You say that emotions are a qualifier for humanity?"

"N-no, I mean-" Shikamaru dug his fingers into his scalp, frustrated.

"I do not feel emotions the way you do," Sai continued, black eyes cool, "and because of that you would call me inhuman?"

"No, because I know you, I know you're human."

Sai stood, a black wraith in the shadows of the fire, his smile cold and ruthless. "Because you know me, you can decide if I'm human?" He turned, their gazes following his to the golden light bleeding over the walls from the jinchuuriki's home. "You don't know them, and you've already decided?"

Sai's eyes were black fire, his voice ice. "Are you truly that much of a hypocrite?" Then he turned, and stalked away into the darkness, leaving Shikamaru mouthing useless words.

Neji rubbed at his eyes, banked the fire, stress and pain and fear- fear for Konoha, fear for his friends, fear for himself, fear for all that might not survive- soaking him in cold sweat. He didn't recognize his own voice when he spoke.

"It's late; we need to sleep and be ready to move out as soon as the jinchuuriki make their decisions."

The others moved with weary limbs to their sleeping bags, while Shino sat beneath the spreading branches of an oak tree to take first watch, his face half-obscured by gossamer spider threads.

Neji slid into his bedroll, folded his arms about himself in an instinctive gesture of self-comfort that he had never been able to shake. He had done it ever since he was young, when he would wrap himself in his own embrace and pretend that it was his father's strong arms.

All the Konoha shinobi could do- now, when the fate of their country and their families hung in the balance- was wait for a decision made by a man that none of them knew anymore, not really.

The only hope Neji had was that maybe- just maybe- Naruto's love for friends and home was one of those vanishingly rare things that would never, ever change, as eternal as the stars.

He closed his eyes, curled tighter, whispered a tiny prayer to unknown gods into the silence.

With tired heart and tired soul, he slept.

* * *

Gaara looked up from his drawing as he heard metallic clinking from down the hall, the silhouette of one of the jinchuuriki a black blot against the moonlight as they passed into the kitchen. '_Strange; no one should be awake at this hour._' Then again, he reflected as he laid aside his charcoal and stood, easing the cramps in his back and legs, the jinchuuriki had a way of subverting 'should have beens'.

The wooden floor of the house was cold and smooth as metal beneath his bare feet, light gleaming pale on the glass picture frames as he passed by them, the solemn eyes of past sacrifices staring into a world that they would never live in.

"Katashi…?" his voice trailed off as he saw just who was in the kitchen. All the jinchuuriki- but for Naruto, and he smothered a stab of irritation at Naruto's ability to sleep through an earthquake- were gathered around the kitchen table in their pajamas, Katashi's eyes sleepy, his hair ruffled. Varg had made the table, hauling pieces of lumber out of the scrap piles, sawing and shaping day after day until the huge, dark-brown behemoth found its place in the kitchen, centerpiece of their lives. Shinobu insisted upon them all eating dinner together every night, no matter what.

"What is the cause for the meeting?" He took his place between Riko and Varg, shifting so that his elbow touched Riko's.

"We're discussing if- and this is an 'if', Katashi, not a 'when'- we go, what terms we'll demand for our service," Noboru said, stirring his cup of tea contemplatively, abstract curlicues of smoke drifting around his black-marked face, turning him for a moment into a temple statue of obsidian.

"Ah. What have you decided on?"

"Ability to veto our given assignments and receive ones in different locations, against different shinobi, for one," Yugito read off the sheet of paper before her, fingers following Katashi's chicken-scratch handwriting.

"Our own living quarters, separate from those of the civilians," Shinobu added, ticking them off on her fingers, "and access to all of Konoha's military equipment: weapons, provisions, armor, et cetera.

"I will be guaranteed employment in the hospital, rather than the battlefield. Neither Riko nor Moriko will be sent into battle," Shinobu finished. Moriko didn't stir from Shinobu's lap at the sound of her name, the sweep of her dark eyelashes like rainbows of ashes on her cheeks as she slept on, oblivious. Riko muttered in discontent, subsiding like earth under rain as Gaara nudged her, occupying herself by counting dust grains.

The fear was a noose around his stomach, fear for her- war was chaos, was light and sound and everything she couldn't stand, couldn't survive with- with her tattered notebook full of probability ratios counting down inexorably to one-to-one.

"We will each receive combat pay exceeding that of an ANBU, and will have free room and board," Noboru continued, setting aside his emptied teacup. He looked up, glanced around, sulfur-yellow eyes burning in the darkness.

"Those would be our demands. Anything further, I fear would be redundant."

"Whatever." Katashi leaned forward from where he crouched on the seat of his chair, baggy shirt hanging off his shoulders, exposing the black whorls and waves of his seal. "It seems like a good deal to me, especially considering they kind of have to give it all to us…" he trailed off, finished, chagrined, "-if we go, I mean."

'_There is the problem. _If_ we go._' Gaara glanced around the table at his family. Katashi was rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist, yawning, while Shinobu took the rare opportunity to hold Moriko.

Katashi- idealistic Katashi, a boy searching for meaning that he would never find in the cesspool of war- would go, because he was young. Riko would go anywhere new, anywhere with something to learn. Shinobu, in all likelihood, would follow, unable to stand by while thousands died. Varg and Moriko would go wherever the others went. Noboru and Yugito, forever tainted by the black ink of war running roughshod through their veins, would dissent. He understood their perspective, the two benighted souls who had gone to war and never returned, not completely.

As for himself…

He would do what he had always done, to repay a debt that could never- _never_- be paid. A debt to the person who had made him more than a weapon, more than a demon, freed him from the constant howls for bloodshed echoing through the empty spaces inside him.

He would follow Naruto to war, ride with him to find new pains, new agonies that would rumble forever inside him.

He would follow Naruto to war, and he would never come back the same.

* * *

The morning was muggy, Sasuke's shirt molding itself to his back. Steam rose off the quiet brooks that wove in and out of the rings of the Village like needle and thread, even the golden koi in their depths somnolent. Sasuke dug the toe of his sandal into the white sand, glaring at the others.

Most of the jinchuuriki were scattered around the eighth ring, making fumbling attempts at conversation with the Konoha shinobi, their paltry stabs reminding him of how cruel the other children had been to Naruto, jeering at him for his social incompetence.

But how could they have expected him to be competent, when he had no one but Iruka to teach him?

And these other jinchuuriki, these people that Naruto called his family now- a slash of rancor in his heart, jealousy whispering '_I was his family, I should be his family, not _them'- hadn't even had that.

In all honesty, he reflected as he watched Kakashi try to ask Yugito about one of her lightning techniques and fail miserably, it was a wonder that as many of the jinchuuriki had turned out as well as they had.

Sakura and Hinata were babbling like mentally-challenged children at Moriko, making expressions that reminded him of the television characters he had used to watch when he was young, sprawled out before the television set with a plate of his mother's onigiri and a glass of milk.

'_And you'll never have her onigiri again, and you'll never see your father again, and you'll never- never, not even after the universe is swallowed up in entropy- avenge their deaths the way Itachi told you to._'

Blood sprang from where his lip was caught between his teeth, and he hissed in surprise. He hadn't even noticed that he'd bitten it.

The memory of Itachi still burned, all these years later. The need for solitude- for a place where he could sit and think and claw new mental wounds of self-hatred into himself- overwhelmed like the tide. It was the work of moments to slip over the wall and into the seventh ring.

The fire-gutted ruins of homes and shops leaned, decaying, against each other, the little breeze fluttering through empty rooms in a parody of life. Dust stirred beneath his feet in clouds without rain.

He wondered if that was what Konoha had looked like, in the future without hope that Naruto had saved them from.

The future where he'd given in to every dark impulse he'd ever had, every secret thought held close to the heart, cutting with '_if I go to Orochimaru_' or '_Konoha doesn't need me_'. Because sometimes at night, with the cold wind sobbing outside his window and Itachi's red eyes incandescent inside his eyelids, he'd thought of it, thought of mimicking Naruto, thought of running north.

Except Naruto- good, moral, _perfect_ Naruto- had done all he had done for the right reasons.

Sasuke's reasons for betrayal could never be right or moral.

Nausea boiled in his throat and stomach at the memory of what Naruto had told them, of the never-born sensation of Kakashi's eye rolling slick and scarlet between his fingers, of the phantom vision of Sakura's mouth open in an unending cry as he tore her open from belly to jaw.

He was sickened, not by the words, but by the fact that- if he closed his eyes against his reflection, barred his heart against shame- he could have become that, could have done that, still felt the malicious potential blistering his soul.

Sasuke snarled, slammed his fist into the high white wall beside him. His knuckles bled as he pulled his hand away from the stone, leaving a red-brown smear the color of guilt across the wall.

"You're going to fix that, you know."

He turned, gritting his teeth against the insidious whispers of '_You should have sensed him, you failure. Shouldn't even be in ANBU if you can't even do something that fucking simple._'

Naruto was perched on top of one of the crumbling gables, grinning, the light illuminating him in a halo of gold.

"Get somebody else to," Sasuke said flatly. "I don't live here."

Naruto's smile didn't waver as he leaped off the roof and landed in front of Sasuke, glancing around at the empty doorways, the windows like black eyes. A breeze stirred the dust between them, the cloud more tangible than what was truly keeping them apart. "They did."

"They're dead," he bit out. Naruto- good, perfect, wonderful Naruto who could do no wrong- blinked, narrowed his eyes in thought.

Sasuke tried to ignore the hints of red in Naruto's eyes.

"Are you mad at me because of what I said?" Naruto asked, shifting from foot to foot like a chastised child. The sight twisted Sasuke's heart: he remembered Naruto as a genin, unable to stay still, constantly moving, tapping his foot when in a desk, rocking back and forth when standing. At least that- if only that one thing- hadn't changed.

"I do wish you hadn't told me that."

Naruto rolled his eyes, turned away and kicked at one of the rotting columns. "I _told_ you you wouldn't want to hear it. You could've left if it bothered you that much."

Rage sparked, flared, burned hot. "I wasn't going to leave! I hadn't seen you in six years! I hadn't sparred with you in six years," he bit out. "You _left_ us-"

'-_me._'

Naruto only shrugged, wandering over to a piece of charred wood and picking it up, the black smearing across his hands like dried blood. There was no fire, no yelling, nothing but casual indifference and infuriating moral certainty.

Sasuke's voice was as old as Gaara's eyes as he said, "You couldn't have stayed? You couldn't have just told us about what you saw? We would've believed you; we could have changed things."

Naruto glanced at him, the tiny lines of stress around his mouth crinkling as he smiled, let the wood- remnant of a lost time, a lost way of life that only the jinchuuriki knew- fall to the ground. He watched it bounce, a small storm of dust spreading in ripples from where it fell.

He looked completely alone and older than time in that moment.

"I made the choice because it had to be made. No one else could've done it. I've done so many things that I'm not proud of- I _killed_ Konoha shinobi- and I wish…" he looked up, and his voice cracked, "More than anything, I wish I could have stayed.

"But there's nothing we can do about that now. Maybe I should have told you; maybe I should've stayed. But if I'd stayed, the other jinchuuriki would have died. Moriko would still be rotting in that shed, starving to death but unable to die because of the Hokou. Varg would still be sitting inside the cell that he sat in for nineteen years. Riko would probably be catatonic, and all the others would have been killed by Akatsuki.

"I don't know if I made the right choice," he admitted, meeting Sasuke's eyes.

"But I know that whatever happens now is better than what I saw." Naruto kicked at the dirt clods, jaw clenched. "And all we can do now is accept what happened, and move on."

'_He hasn't changed. He's still optimistic, still stubborn, still… Naruto._' Relief spread through Sasuke like rain, the tightness in his chest loosening, allowing him to finally breathe again, to say what had been festering inside him for six long, long years.

"I… missed you." Sasuke's voice cracked.

Naruto looked up, crossed the space between them in four quick strides as if he had been waiting for this all his life, and grabbed Sasuke in a bone-crushing hug. Shock raced through him, paralyzed him for a long moment, before he closed his eyes, let his arms rise to return the embrace.

"I missed you, too," he said into Sasuke's collar, "you bastard."

Things would never be the same between them. They would never have the same blind, unthinking trust again.

But they had this.

And for now, that was enough.

* * *

The sunset painted the trees golden-red, the tiny demons curled around their branches basking in the last light of the day. Most of the jinchuuriki had already retreated back into the ninth ring, weary of talk, suspicious of outsiders.

Shikamaru rolled over as he heard Sakura's feet crunch on fallen leaves. The others were all scattered around, Lee and Gai busy with kicking the air in a vain attempt to get rid of nervous energy.

They were running out of time; the jinchuuriki needed to make their choice soon.

"Guys!" Sakura called. Like water returning to the source, the shinobi of Konoha filtered back- Sasuke from over the wall, Neji from the trees, Kiba and Hinata from the banks of one of the streams.

They all formed their usual pattern, people falling into place like tumblers in a lock.

"Kakashi and I have been talking," Sakura said, glancing with trepidation at Kakashi, who nodded, "and we've decided…"

There was a long pause. She closed her eyes, ran fingers through her short hair- the hair of an ANBU- and finished in a rush, the words tumbling over each other like rocks in a stream,

"-that you guys should know the real reason Naruto left."

"What do you mean, the 'real reason?" Kiba said.

Sakura looked at Sasuke for a moment; Sasuke met her eyes, finally lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. Sakura nodded, the entire conversation over and done with in less than a second.

'_Teamwork. They were always the best in ANBU at communication._'

"Naruto's the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi, right?" Sakura continued.

"Yeah…" Chouji said, frowning, brow wrinkling. The idea was still faintly absurd: that the Kyuubi, a beast as tall as a mountain and stronger than any shinobi of Konoha, was contained inside Naruto- _Naruto_, who loved ramen and pranks and yelling.

But in all honesty, the signs had always been there, and Shikamaru had only himself to blame for not putting the pieces together.

"The Kyuubi's a kitsune, and it turns out that when a kitsune gets old enough," Sakura wrung her hands, the nails chewed, her eyes miserable, "they can see the future. And the Kyuubi couldn't have lied, when it came to this. The Kyuubi showed Naruto what would happen if he stayed…"

She trailed off, stared into the distance with eyes a million miles away. Her throat worked. Shikamaru blinked, once, twice, pieces falling into place, forming a picture of sacrifice and pain. The hairs on the back of Shikamaru's neck rose as he finally understood how much- and how deeply- he had underestimated Naruto.

"He left to prevent that future from happening, didn't he?" His words fell flat in the silence.

"Yeah," Sasuke said, turning away, uncaring. Hinata glanced around, then at Sakura, who was gazing down at the ground, her eyes glossy with tears.

"W- was it really that bad?" she ventured.

Kakashi laughed, a short, sharp bark completely without joy. Asuma was chewing on the end of his cigarette, shifting back and forth on his heels. '_That's never a good sign._'

"He only told us a little, but apparently there was a war between the Sound and the Land of Fire," Kakashi said. "Team Seven and Team Ten died first."

Shikamaru's breath stuttered to a stop.

He _died?_ He had _died_? Ino's face was as pale as the moon, her lips moving soundlessly, eyes wide as the ocean; Chouji sat down with a thump on a nearby log, his legs going out from under him like wet noodles.

Asuma's face twisted in shock and grief, the cigarette falling from between his lips. It fell, streaming ashes like a bomb, to the earth.

And it made so much _sense_, so much terrible, crystalline sense: why Naruto had left the place he had loved for so long, why he had let Gai's team live after Yugito defeated them, why he hadn't given away the secrets of Konoha to any of the rival villages that would have killed for them.

He should have known. He was a genius: sure, he wasn't the greatest shinobi, or the fastest, or the strongest, but he was _damn_ well the smartest, and he should have known.

Kakashi continued, relentless as a hurricane, while Sasuke stood and gazed off into the distance, alone and apart,

"Hinata and Kiba also fell, along with Gai's team."

Hinata made a choked sound of distress like a rabbit caught in a trap, she and Kiba holding each other up, pained eyes flickering towards Shino.

"And I?" Shino asked, the kikai rippling in black waves on his skin, his voice uncharacteristically shaken. Kakashi's lips twitched in a heartrending smile.

"You killed yourself."

Shino subsided, looked down, jaw clenching. Tenten's fists were shaking. Lee simply stared, while Neji closed his eyes, trying to breathe. Kurenai took Asuma's hand, while Gai laid his hand on Lee's shoulder.

"What about Konoha?" said Sai.

Sakura took over, choked out in a voice that held all the agony of the world, "Konoha fell. Naruto was the only survivor."

"So…" Shikamaru said slowly, "he didn't betray us." His voice cracked. "He _saved_ us."

"Yes," Sasuke whispered, as night ran across the western horizon like a dark horse without a rider.

"He saved us."

* * *

Asuma flicked the ashes off his cigarette, rubbed at itching eyes with the back of his hand.

"We've got to ask him for his decision," he said. Gai turned to him, nodded.

"We have to leave tomorrow, with or without him. 'With' being a lot better than 'without', of course," he added with a weak smile, a pale imitation of the usually blinding grin.

"I know where he is," Kakashi said, unfolding from his crouch in one smooth motion, the grace of an ANBU. "The second ring."

Asuma got up, groaning as old wounds complained, and followed Kakashi, the end of his cigarette the only light in the darkness as footbridges creaked beneath his feet, only the sound of water warning him where not to step.

Burned buildings loomed out of the darkness like monsters from children's tales, their dark windows glaring at them as if they were intruding upon sacred ground.

Although really, in a sense, they were- ground sacred to the jinchuuriki, the ground of a place where they were accepted for who and what they were, rather than hated for something they couldn't control.

They found Naruto standing before a small, leaning wooden marker, a darker shape against the blackness.

Gai paused, mouth open, only to be cut off as Naruto spoke into the night,

"He was just six years old, and people were always mean to him because he carried the Nekomata. But you know, he never gave up. Every time someone was mean to him, he got right back up and went on, even-" his voice cracked, "-even though he knew he was going to be hated forever.

"But one day a message came, offering hope. Do you know what it said?"

The cigarette burned out in the darkness, light extinguished. Gai stepped up beside Naruto, gazed down at the pitiful monument to a child lost.

"No," Gai said, "I don't. Tell me."

Naruto's voice shuddered in the darkness. "It offered peace. It said that he could have a home, a family, a life. And all he had to do to take that promise was to fight for this new village, Konoha."

Asuma heard Gai's indrawn breath. Naruto's shadowy shoulders sagged. "He believed it. Like all the jinchuuriki, he believed it. He wanted to believe that somewhere, people could see him for _who_ he was, rather than _what_ he was. So he went, and he joined the jinchuuriki and the soldiers of Konoha, and he fought for that promise, for that hope. He was six years old, and he knew more of death that most people know in a lifetime."

"What happened to him?" Asuma asked.

Naruto laughed, a broken, bitter sound. "Konoha lied to the jinchuuriki. It didn't need them after the war- because they weren't necessary for peace, and they were too _dangerous_ to have around- so it threw them away like trash. And this boy who gave up everything he had for Konoha's promise was shoved out into the wilderness like… he was nothing."

"Konoha's not like that anymore," Kakashi said, placing his hand on Naruto's shoulder. Naruto shook his head slowly, once, twice.

"No. It still is. You only want me to come back to save you from defeat. You only want the other jinchuuriki to come and save you, because you can't do it on your own."

Asuma couldn't breathe. Naruto's voice was flat: without love, without caring, without emotion.

'_Then we have failed. He doesn't care._'

"Then you're not coming back," he said, the words more a statement than a question.

Naruto blinked, lifted his head, and smiled, heartbreaking in its familiarity. "You think I could be that cold?" He turned from the pitiful grave, stepped closer.

Asuma's heart twisted in his chest with guilt for Naruto, his commitment and his love for them and for Konoha. At how little he really knew him. Naruto's voice was a beacon of hope in the gloom,

"It's okay. I'm going with you."

Naruto closed the front door behind him, crossed the living room. The wood was cool against his feet, moonlight like white tiger's stripes slashing across the floor from the windows. The mementos of the jinchuuriki, the things that made this house a home, surrounded him: Gaara's charcoal sketches, Varg's rough-hewn carvings, Moriko's scribbled drawings, Shinobu's diagrams.

Sadness settled on him like ashes. He hoped they would come with him, knew they probably wouldn't. Why should they fight for a country that had done nothing for them; that had destroyed Varg's life and what remained of his sanity?

The stairs creaked beneath his feet as he climbed. The others' rooms were empty; Katashi's hoarded food loomed like black mountains in his closet, while Yugito's kusarigama gleamed in a silver slash of light in her spare, relentlessly uniform bedroom.

None of them were there. '_Could be out somewhere discussing, like they were last night._' He opened his door, the brass knob cold on his skin, and went inside, rubbing at his eyes in exhaustion.

Naruto turned from closing the door to his room and raised a brow at the others, all crowded together in the small space. Varg lounged indolently over the ratty hammock, Moriko sprawled on his chest, his callused hand resting on her back, his red eyes gleaming in the darkness. Yugito stood glowering in the corner, arms folded, a silent sentinel, exuding menace, while Katashi sat on the floor between Shinobu's legs, her hands busy with combing his wild hair. Noboru leaned on his cane, peering at him gravely from behind his spectacles, his mouth in a thin line of irritation. Riko's blindfolded eyes were turned toward him, her face serious, her small hand resting on Gaara's ankle.

Gaara stepped forward, glanced back at the others, and looked forward again.

"We have decided."

"You- you have?" he forced out, throat closing up with anticipation and no small bit of fear, for whatever they decided, someone would be hurt.

"Yes." He didn't even know what to hope for, what would be the better outcome: to stay in the Village forever, isolated, alone, or to return to the real world and die for a village that he still- stupidly- loved?

Gaara reached out, gripped his arm, and said in a voice that filled the entire hut with its gravity, eyes gleaming yellow with the remnants of Shukaku,

"We will follow you, Naruto, to the end."

* * *

**Annotations**

'…_ride with him to find new pains, new agonies that would rumble forever inside him._' – An allusion to the poem 'Bound for Nam' by Robert S. McGowen.

'…_and he would never come back the same._' – An allusion to the poem 'Bound for Nam' by Robert S. McGowen.

* * *

**A/N:** Comments and criticism are loved. The Konoha-nin's reactions to Sakura's revelation and the individual jinchuurikis' reasons for joining Naruto will be expanded on in the next chapter. All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile.


	22. Chapter 22

**A/N: **I apologize for the long wait for this chapter. I got involved with some other projects and have been having some chronic health issues that have taken up much of my time. This chapter is dedicated to the twelve remaining World War One veterans, particularly Harry Patch, the last veteran of trench warfare.

* * *

_I've lived in this place and I know all the faces  
Each one is different but they're always the same  
They mean me no harm but it's time that I face it  
They'll never allow me to change  
But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong_

- 'I'm Movin' On' by Rascal Flatts

* * *

Ino caught Sakura's eye, the two exchanging smiles as they heard crashes and screams from the jinchuuriki's home. The other Konoha-nin glanced warily at each other. Above it all, there was Noboru's voice, the monotone of someone whose boundless patience had just about run out.

"Naruto, I'm sorry, but you don't need twenty pairs of underwear when we can buy what we need in Konoha. Katashi, if you try and sneak that can of natto out, you won't need to worry about staying alive; the enemy will smell that and kill you immediately."

"But I _like_ natto-"

Ino wrinkled her nose- how anyone could like natto, what with its stench and the pulpy feeling and the long strings of goop, was completely beyond her. That was like her wanting to go spend her life being a civilian!

There was an explosion. Katashi sprinted out the door, fell over himself- long-limbed and gangly in the manner of teenage boys- and groaned in pain as Shinobu threw his pack on top of him. Noboru appeared on the porch, leaning on his cane, an exploding tag held in his free hand.

"I made packing lists," Noboru said, yellow eyes slits of irritation, "but you all seem to refuse to follow them. One would think you were children."

Katashi groaned. Yugito strolled by, her tiny pack cinched to her back, kusarigama at her hip, and kicked him. Gaara followed, ignoring Katashi totally, tailed by Riko. The earth under Katashi swelled, pushing him upright, before subsiding.

The others slowly filtered out of the house, even Shinobu, who, burdened with a bag full of medical supplies, didn't walk so much as stagger. Naruto, bringing up the rear, paused, turned, and reached for the doorknob.

The door shut on the house beneath the trees for what might be the final time. Naruto leaned against the doorframe, his fingers curled into a fist beside his face, eyes closed. A long sigh floated in the air.

It was almost like he was saying goodbye to peace.

Naruto straightened, turned towards them, his smile still wide and crooked as ever. Ino met his eyes, searching for some sign of how much he must have changed to sacrifice himself the way he did.

But there was no change in those blue depths- just Naruto. Just a boy, who, at twelve years old, gave up all he ever knew and loved to save people who would never know what he had done.

It was humbling, and she looked away. Naruto joined the group, clapped Varg's shoulder, sharing a fierce smile before he joined the Konoha-nin. Sasuke nodded to him- that was a good sign- before Naruto looked at Kakashi and Sakura. Ino frowned: Kakashi and Sakura were standing a little ways away from Sasuke, a tiny separation that yet was as vast as any ocean.

Something had happened there, some terrible wound gaping between them, and she wanted to know what it was. Sakura would tell her; what were friends for, if not to lend an ear?

Naruto squared his shoulders. "I'm ready." And slowly the jinchuuriki and the shinobi of Konoha left the Village of Shadows behind them, nine great gates closing with a sound as final as a kunai sinking into a throat.

The jinchuuriki marched ahead, and didn't look back.

* * *

The group split up into smaller teams, all taking different routes to the border. Naruto was with Yugito, Gaara, Katashi, and Riko; if he didn't go with them, they'd all just march to Konoha in complete silence, and that'd be no fun for any of them. Not that any of them were particularly fun-oriented people…

It was night, and the moon hovered low and full in the sky like a hanging fruit. There was no fire- Yugito insisted on it- and so they sat- or in Naruto's case, lounged- on the grass of the clearing, Katashi gnawing on rations. Gaara had disappeared to go be alone; something unusual, since he'd usually at least take Riko with him.

"Hey, Yugito?"

"Yeah?" She was sitting behind Riko, picking apart the snarls and tangles in Riko's dark hair with her fingers, listening to Riko's tuneless humming.

Naruto pushed himself up on his elbows, scratching at a mosquito bite. "Not that I'm not glad you're coming with us, because I _definitely_ am, but…" he wondered if the question would offend her, but figured that she probably wouldn't care. Yugito wasn't the type to care about anything other than battle.

"Why _are_ you coming?"

Yugito paused in her work, blue eyes reflecting the pale fire of the moonlight, glowing from within. Riko shifted, annoyed. With a muttered "Fine, fine, you're so impatient," Yugito returned to Riko's hair, her eyes intent with thought.

"There are two reasons, I suppose." Her eyes were distant as a fading star. "I made a promise to myself, once- I think it was on the road outside Kusa, after we picked up Shinobu- that I would never let any of the jinchuuriki die in battle before me." She smiled without humor. "I'm going to keep that promise, even if I don't give a damn about Konoha."

Naruto winced. "And the other reason?"

Yugito's hands stilled, and she moved away from Riko, turning to face him fully. He heard blood bubbling in her throat as the Nekomata stirred, drawn by the talk of death. Katashi glanced up, leaned closer, wanting to hear Yugito reveal something about herself- a rare event in any case, rarer now that their peaceful life in the Village was gone.

"I enjoy killing." The words were as stark and bleak as a blasted tree. "People look at me and think that because I'm attractive, I'm nice and moral." She bared her teeth in an expression that looked nothing like a smile. "But I'm not. I don't give a damn about anyone's life beside the jinchuuriki's. I don't agonize over killing someone; I enjoy it, and this war will give me plenty of opportunity." She shrugged, a thousand years of pain in one short movement. "And I wonder, sometimes, if I'm like this because of what Kumo did to me; if I'd be a good, kind person if I wasn't a jinchuuriki."

She glanced down, finished pulling Riko's hair back into a ponytail. "I think I would have been."

Something hard and sad lodged in Naruto's throat as he watched her get up and disappear into the darkness to train, kusarigama gleaming like a slice of moonlight at her hip, Katashi following, swinging his sword through the air.

Riko scooted over to him, leaned against his side. His arm came up automatically to curl around her skinny shoulders. She leaned her head against him, and he felt her chest expand in a sigh.

"Something up?"

"The sky." Naruto rolled his eyes. Riko dug her elbow into his side, making him yelp, before continuing, "But yes, there is an issue present."

Naruto stared at her resentfully before making a sound of encouragement.

"I asked Gaara if he felt feelings of familial affection towards me yesterday. I am going because I feel such for him, and thus will follow him to Konoha."

He stared into the distance, processing for a moment, before saying,

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You asked Gaara if he loved you?"

Riko sniffed, slurred, "If you must use such imprecise language, then affirmative." She waited for a moment, then said, "Your silence implies I made a faux pas."

"Err… I just wouldn't use the word 'love' around him. He has issues with that… word." Trust Riko to inadvertently screw things up by trying to quantify her and Gaara's relationship. "How'd he react?"

Riko sighed again, ran fingers over the grass, calculating the number of grass blades in a square inch before answering. "He was silent. I… just wanted to know," she sniffled, rubbed at her nose with her sleeve, "if he felt the same feelings for me that I do for him, because… if…" She paused, searched for the words for a long minute as Naruto's chest ached, "I'm going to go to Konoha, and maybe expire, then I want to know that before I do."

Naruto, helpless in the face of a crying girl, rooted in Yugito's pack for a tissue and gave it to her. She thanked him with a watery smile, blowing her nose and handing the tissue to him. Wrinkling his nose, he stuffed it into his pocket.

"You're not going to die. Hell, you're not even going into battle-" his stomach lurched with regret as she scowled at the reminder, the earth shuddering beneath them, "-to keep you from dying, might I add." He ran his fingers through his hair, continued softly,

"Look. Gaara loves you, even if he's not going to say it." The jinchuuriki tended to forget that Riko was only a teenager, with a teenager's dreams and insecurities: even being a jinchuuriki and spending most of her life dying by inches, while it'd given her maturity, hadn't changed that. "Gaara does care about all the jinchuuriki, but it's you that he wanted to room next to. It's you who he spends most of his time with. It's you who he lets touch him. You haven't seen it, but Gaara doesn't like to be touched. He lets Katashi and Moriko and I hug him, because we're touchy-feely people and get insulted if he doesn't, but it's only you that he doesn't mind touching him. Whenever he walks into a room, the first person he looks for is you."

"Re-" A long pause, a hiss of frustration, "Really?"

"Really. Trust me. He loves you. He may never say it, but he does. Don't _ever_ doubt it, not even for a moment."

Riko was silent for a long while, the only sound crickets and the distant humming of Yugito's Raikyus, before she finally nodded. "Th- thank you."

"Hey, no problem," he said, letting her duck out from underneath his arm. The earth yawned as she sank into it, disappearing to rest for the night.

Exhaustion weighed heavy as a stone on his shoulders as he let his head rest in his hands. Even six years of peace couldn't heal the jinchuuriki: couldn't teach Varg to speak like an adult or Moriko to read the books she should've been able to for her age or-

Or stop Riko from dying.

She was getting skinnier. She was getting paler. Her words were coming slower, her stumbles in conversation coming faster.

Shinobu had looked at her brain after every seizure, had confirmed with watery eyes and shaking voice the slow deaths of brain cells, the unraveling of neurons. And it hurt- _God_, it hurt to watch that beautiful, unique, intelligent, funny girl wasting away because some stupid fucker in Iwa decided to stick a demon in her in the name of 'science'.

Naruto figured he'd probably end up fighting some Iwa shinobi at some point. And if they died in various messy and painful ways, well-

He wouldn't grieve overmuch.

* * *

Tenten clapped her hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter as she watched Neji's eyes glaze over, the Hyuuga forced to endure Noboru's tenth story about the First War.

"You'd think war stories would be interesting," she whispered to Lee.

"I guess Noboru thinks that methods of chopping trees and building camps are interesting," Lee said, shrugging.

"We all have our hobbies."

"I suppose…" Lee said doubtfully. Noboru glanced at them, flashing a wicked smile. '_He knows _exactly _what he's doing,_' Tenten realized, grinning, '_and he knows Neji's about to spontaneously combust to get away from it._'

"Oh, I'm sorry," Noboru said to Neji, "I appear to be boring you-"

"No, no, please, do go on," Neji said, trying to appear polite, although he looked as though he'd rather take a kunai to the groin than listen to another one of Noboru's tales. Noboru shook his head.

"I grow rather weary of talking. Tell me, how prepared is Konoha for this war?"

"Fairly well," Gai butted in. "As well-prepared as anyone can be, for something this big. We've fought Iwa before-"

"And eked out a win only through the Yondaime's skill," Noboru said, sulfur-yellow eyes flaring bright. "What do you expect to do without your Yondaime, up against the four other Great Villages? Who do you have that can match the Yondaime?"

"No one can match the Yondaime," Neji said, "but we have Hatake, Tsunade, Jiraiya…"

"Then why do you need us?" Noboru asked innocently, his eyes hard with knowing. "If your shinobi are so skilled, why travel all this way for an old man, a baby, and a dying girl? Why leave your village to only gain nine people?"

Tenten had had enough.

"Look, old man, do you want us to admit it?" Lee and Neji cast alarmed looks at her. "Because I'll damn well do it! We need you to save us, because we're too weak to do it ourselves without losing everything we fought for in the first place. We need you to be our weapons, because what we have isn't going to do it. And if you don't want to deal with that, then you can just go back to the jungle and rot."

Gai buried his head in his hands. Tenten stopped, realizing what she had said. Sweat ran cold and harsh down her spine. '_The Hokage's going to kill me._'

"Very good," Noboru said, his bearded face wrinkling in a smile. "So long as we're clear about why we're coming. I couldn't bear to leave you laboring under your false pretensions of 'liberating' the jinchuuriki from solitude." Lee blushed. Tenten rolled her eyes. '_Poor Lee. So idealistic._'

"What's your reason, then?"

Noboru limped over to a log by the fire, and eased himself down to sit, a pained hiss escaping through his teeth. He set his cane aside, rested his chin on his scaly hand. Tenten plopped down beside the fire and leaned back on her elbows, while Lee started kicking the air, listening.

"I am," Noboru said without preamble, "quite possibly the oldest shinobi on the continent. The only other living veteran of the First War that I know of is Sarutobi."

"He… died," Gai managed, the wound still painful, even years on. Noboru bowed his head.

"Ah." The soft, sad sound lingered in the air. "Then I am the last." His swollen-knuckled fingers tightened on his cane as he went on,

"It is a very strange experience, to know that you gave up the best years of your life to a war that… didn't change anything, in the end. To know that thousands of shinobi died for nothing- that their deaths didn't prevent the second war, or the third, and now all these poor bastards are marching off again. And to know that you're the only one left- that all those memories of death and sacrifice are only alive in you. That when you're gone, all that's left will be pictures and words. But those don't _tell_ you anything-"

Even Neji seemed spellbound, his eyes fixed on Noboru's tired head, bowed by the immense weight.

"They don't tell you what it's like to climb a ridge with your only friends at your side- the _only three _people in your town who look at you and see a man and not a demon- and then to turn around and see them blown apart into red mist. They don't tell you what it's like to sit in the mud for weeks with lice crawling all over you, until it gets so bad that some people cut their Achilles tendon just to get sent home. They don't tell you what it's like to hold some young man while he screams for his mother because most of his bottom half is gone."

Noboru's smile was as thin and humorless as the blade of a spear. "But I know. I was there at the First War, when we saw shrapnel cannons for the first time and realized that there wasn't any room anymore for heroes. I was there when my village was left with only cripples and crying mothers to its name. I was there at the first Great War, and I'll be there at the last."

"The last?" Tenten echoed.

"Of course. This will be the last Great War among the five great villages; this war will be so long, and so bloody, and so pointless, that no one will win: some will just lose a little less than others. Konoha may survive. It may not. But this war will be so brutal that every single village will lose an entire generation of young men and women. They will lose the very capacity to wage another Great War for decades.

So this will be the last Great War. And I will be there, so that when I die and join those thousands of comrades that went before me, I can tell them, 'Our war finally ended.'"

Noboru trailed off, wincing as he levered himself to his feet and hobbled over to his sleeping bag. Tenten watched him go. Pity suffused her; pity for all the jinchuuriki.

'_I suppose it was a good thing that Naruto left, then, if he managed to save the others from ending up like Noboru._' She couldn't imagine the feeling of only having three people in your entire village see you as being human, as someone worth talking to. But then…

Had she really ever said a word to Naruto before the Chuunin Exams? Sure, she'd known who he was, in that distant, '_oh, there's that boy who wears orange and has no friends_', but she'd never said a word to him. She'd never even tried to find out why all the people around her seemed to hate him so much.

'_It couldn't have been too hard for him to leave. After all, it wasn't like anybody besides his team wanted him to stay._'

And now they were dragging him back to fight in a war that he had no stake in. They were treating him like a weapon again: an exceptionally dangerous and coveted weapon, like one of her tantos, but still a weapon. Still an object.

They were treating a person who sacrificed himself to save them like he was nothing.

He'd left them to save them from a future where none of them had one.

'_And look what you got for it. You got hated by your home, killed a Hunter-nin, and now you're getting pulled back into all the problems you left._'

She felt sorry for him, but Tenten, more than anything else, was a practical person, and so…

Even if he died in the war still to come, she was still glad he left, and still glad he was coming back.

She wondered if that meant she was finally a true shinobi.

She wondered if she liked what she had become.

* * *

Ino found Sakura's group by the edge of a small stream. Kakashi was perched on a tree branch, reading his book, while Sasuke and Sai sparred, the stream flying like birds made of water into the air.

"Hey, Forehead Girl! I want to talk to you-" she shifted her eyes into the direction of the others, "-alone."

Sakura finished cleaning the blade of her naginata and stood, laying it aside on a rock.

"Yeah, what's up?"

Ino didn't say a word, leading them further into the brush. There was silence; all the birds had been scared away by the distant thunder of battle. Sakura followed, her expression bemused, but she didn't look afraid-

Because she was an ANBU now, and ANBU could take care of themselves. It still shocked Ino sometimes, to see that the frail, shy kid she'd known had grown into a beautiful, deadly woman- one of the best ANBU Konoha had to offer.

Ino stooped underneath a low-hanging branch and perched herself on a rock, the small thicket surrounded by thorny bushes. Sakura crossed her arms and leaned against a tree trunk- a defensive posture, and Ino's heart ached at the loss of that open, honest, friendly girl she used to know.

"What happened with you and Sasuke? You guys were so close when we left, and ever you two went in to talk to Naruto, you've-" she flapped her hands, frustrated, "-I don't know, been really weird towards each other. Did Naruto say something? What's going on with you two?"

Sakura's eyes were veiled. "There's nothing going on between me and him."

"_Bullshit._ You two were inseparable- you sleep at his house, you train together, you eat together, he smiles at you, you hug him- and now you haven't said a word to him for an entire day! Even Kakashi's not talking to him. What _happened_? I'm your best friend- can't you tell me? I've always been there-"

"Ino."

The name rang through the silence like the tolling of a bell. Sakura knelt before Ino, gazed up into her eyes with an expression that warned her not to push.

"You are my best friend, true, but Sasuke-"

Sakura sighed, shoved her fingers through her hair. Ino's lips trembled in a heartsick smile as she reached out, touched Sakura's hair, the short strands sliding through her fingers.

It was a symbol, that short hair, a symbol known only to kunoichi. When a kunoichi cut her hair as short as Sakura had- ear-lobe length- it was a sworn oath to the ANBU, a promise to only leave in a pine box.

Ino had cut Sakura's hair the day she went into ANBU. She still had it, bundled in a ribbon, secreted away in her desk drawer- a memento to the girls they had been.

Sakura rubbed at her eyes. "Sasuke is more than my best friend. Sasuke was there when Naruto left; Sasuke was there when my parents tried to make me quit being a shinobi; Sasuke was there to encourage me to take my combat medic-nin specialization, even though everyone didn't know what the hell that even _meant_; Sasuke's been there for all the assassinations and the nightmares; Sasuke's the only person who believed with me in finding Naruto, even when everyone else told us to give up.

Sasuke is my… my partner. I trust him more than I trust Kakashi, my parents, or even you. I love all of you, but Sasuke and I have an official partnership, and a partnership in ANBU is different than a partnership anywhere else."

"Why?"

"Because ANBU is different. Because your partner in ANBU does more than watch your back or bind your wounds. They watch you kill people who did nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they care for you anyway, because they've done the same. They hold you when you puke your guts up because you killed a little kid just for being the child of a traitor, and you hold them when they cry. They do more than carry you home, protect you when you're wounded, or bury you when you're dead." Sakura glanced down at her hands, callused from her naginata's shaft.

"If it becomes necessary, your partner kills you. I trust Sasuke to be willing to sacrifice me for the sake of Konoha, to kill me in the kindest way he can. He trusts me to do the same. And that's why I love him.

"You are my best friend," Sakura said, "but I can never betray Sasuke's confidence, not even for your sake."

Ino's hands trembled. "So you won't tell me?"

Sakura shook her head, standing.

"No." She offered a hand, pulled Ino to her feet. "But I think you might've helped me figure something out." Sakura's face was sad and somehow gentle, and Ino wondered if that was what Sakura looked like after she killed a child. "Something very important, so… thanks."

"What-"

But Sakura was gone, disappearing into the brush. Ino watched her go, her heart heavy with loss and unfulfilled curiosity, before she turned to go back to her team.

The last light of the sun left everything gold in her wake.

* * *

"Okay," Naruto said from where he was sprawled face-down on the tree branch, his limbs dangling over the edge. Noboru was sitting with Moriko, helping her build a 'house' for an ant pile out of twigs. It was the day after his talk with Riko, and he was _exhausted_.

"We need a spokesperson. I'm not going to do it, because I'm not good with diplomacy or politics, and I don't want to mess up because I'm expecting everything to be like it was when I left. It'd be better for someone older to do it who doesn't know anything about Konoha, so they can go in with fresh eyes. We arrive at Konoha tomorrow, so we need to figure out who's going to be spokesperson-" Katashi's hand shot into the air, "-that is _not_ Katashi."

"You never let me have any fun."

"You'd just insult the Hokage without meaning to," Gaara said, watching a river of glass dust weave through his fingers. "You have to admit that you do have a propensity for saying the wrong thing."

"No, I don't." Katashi scratched at the few wispy hairs on his chin, grinning with inordinate pride at their presence. Shinobu rolled her eyes before leaning down to listen to one of her demons.

"It's seen some smoke from patrols and skirmishes about five miles away," she said, biting her lower lip. Kusanagi flamed to life beside her, the green fire blending with the grass. "It couldn't go closer, though." She got up and went to Gaara's side, kneeling beside Riko.

Riko was curled with her head on Gaara's thigh, her hand- so thin that Naruto could see every delicate, spidery vein- curled against her chin. The white cloth of her shirt settled on the deep valleys between her ribs like snow, highlighting the frail bones curving like the skeleton of a ship.

Shinobu took Riko's pulse, fishing out her tattered black notebook to note it down. The jinchuuriki watched her in silence, Katashi shifting from one foot to the other, his eyes glued to Shinobu's face.

Shinobu sat back on her heels. "It's faster than I'd like, but…" she shrugged, "It's not as bad as last week's."

Naruto pressed his cheek against the bark of the tree, sighing. It was better, but not a real better. Not something that would continue; it was just a slight bump upward in a line that led inexorably downward.

"Well, that's progress, right?" Katashi said, grinning. "That's something."

"Yeah," Naruto said with aching heart, "It's something."

Riko slept on, oblivious. Gaara stared down at her placid face, weary and worn, his red-rimmed eyes horrible in their grief.

Varg glanced up from his whittling as a distant explosion thundered through the air, a low grumble resonating in his chest. Moriko giggled, toddling over to him and collapsing on his lap, bright spots of color flickering in the air around her.

Yugito stared at the illusions with barely-concealed distaste, her lips curled in a sneer, before glancing up at Naruto.

"I'll do it."

Naruto blinked, sitting up. Yugito talking to the Hokage… was _probably_ not a good idea.

"Forgive me if I'm a little… dubious," Noboru said, brows drawing together in a frown. "You're not exactly known for your diplomacy."

"I can be diplomatic!"

And then Katashi butted in, whining that he was more diplomatic than Yugito could ever be, and Yugito threatened to bash his face in; Noboru interjected that perhaps threatening to bash an irritant's face in was not a sign of diplomatic aptitude. Then Yugito started arguing with _him,_ and Shinobu tried to mediate it, and Naruto had a pounding, horrible headache.

"All of you, shut _up!_ Yugito's spokeperson," Naruto interrupted. "Look, it's going to be hard enough for me going back without all of you bitching at each other, okay? So can we _please_ just go to Konoha, and go see the Hokage, and go to war without snapping at each other? Please?"

"Fine," Yugito muttered, subsiding.

Naruto closed his eyes, pinching his nose as the hammers on the inside of his skull started working faster.

"Let's go meet the others. We're supposed to be there in an hour."

He didn't want to go. He didn't want to see the places he'd left behind; he didn't want to see Iruka and the disappointment in his eyes; he didn't want to see Konohamaru and hear his accusations.

But he was a leader.

He was the jinchuuriki's leader, and as their leader, he would be brave. He would be strong.

He would be everything they expected of him.

Because he loved them.

Because he could do nothing else.

* * *

**A/N:** All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. All reviews are cherished.


	23. Chapter 23

**A/N: **This chapter, like all the others, was betaed by AisCrim. Reviews are loved!

* * *

_I've been living to see you.  
Dying to see you, but it shouldn't be like this.  
This was unexpected,  
What do I do now?  
Could we start again please?_

'Could We Start Again Please?' from _Jesus Christ Superstar_

* * *

Naruto knew this road. He knew its bumps and dips, he knew the trees that reached for the sky on either side.

He knew it as he knew the beating of his heart.

The shinobi had met up once more three miles outside Konoha, and now they straggled down the road in weary clumps of people. Varg was limping, blisters rising on his feet. The sky was a hard blue, cloudless.

It was a beautiful day, and he resented the world for it.

"Hey."

He glanced over at Kakashi, the older man's face half-hidden behind his book, the visible eye staring at him with eerie consideration.

"Hey," he mimicked, resisting the urge to wipe his palms- damp with cold sweat- on his pants.

"We're all going to peel off once we get there; Asuma just got orders from a messenger bird for all of us to report for a briefing session. A team of ANBU will meet all of you and take you to where the Hokage is waiting."

Naruto swallowed. "This is going to be a public thing?"

Kakashi's eye curved in amusement. "Of course. Having nine of the most powerful shinobi on our side is going to be a huge morale boost for the civilian population. Much better for everyone to see you than to have rumors flying about."

Naruto glanced over his shoulder at Riko, who was skipping along behind Gaara, naming each muscle in her legs as it flexed. '_Crazy girl,_' he thought, smiling.

"Riko won't be able to handle this," he said. "It'll be seizure central for her." Kakashi scratched his chin, conceding the point.

"Kurenai could craft a genjutsu to make her sleep through the entire thing. Varg could carry her; everyone would know who she is, but she wouldn't be in danger."

Naruto's hands curled into fists of impotent rage. "No." His voice rang hollow. "That won't help-" Kakashi turned to face him, "-because she's gotten so bad that she seizures in her sleep, now. Genjutsu wouldn't stop the sound from being there; it just makes you think that it's not."

Kakashi's eye was sad. "I understand. Sakura, Sasuke, and I can stay with her until you all come back, if that's okay with you?"

"It's not me you need to ask. It's Gaara."

Gaara looked up as he heard his name, jogging up the line to walk beside them, Riko following.

"Hey, Gaara. What's up?" Naruto asked, slinging an arm around Gaara's shoulders. Gaara twitched, trying to dislodge his grip, but to no avail.

"I've learned more about the ambulatory muscles in the past hour than I ever wanted to know."

"She'll do that. Listen, this thing's going to be public, and there's going to be a lot of civilians about." Gaara glanced back at Riko, coming to the same conclusion. "Sakura, Sasuke, and Kakashi are willing to stay with Riko outside the gates until it's over."

Gaara stared at Kakashi, his eyes disturbingly flat, like a doll's eyes, his head tilting in silent contemplation.

"How good a medic-nin is Haruno?" he asked abruptly.

"Second only to the Hokage."

Gaara's gaze flickered to Naruto, who shrugged. Gaara had been chosen by Riko, not him; only Gaara could make that choice.

Gaara flicked his hand. Glass flew from the pouch at his waist, formed a little pile in his hand, glowing golden with demonic chakra.

"Do you know what I can do with this?" he said. There was nothing on his face, a return to the impassive boy of the Chuunin Exams. Kakashi looked at the glass dust for a long moment, before nodding.

"I have an idea."

Naruto stayed silent, because- hell, would _you_ want to get between Gaara and Riko?

"Good." Gaara's lips curled in a slight smile that was all the more frightening. "Then I won't have to worry about her." The dust flowed over his fingers in a river of light before sliding back into the bag. Gaara's face slipped back into blankness as he looked straight ahead.

"Riko knows when a seizure is oncoming. She knows the procedure for minimizing damage, as well. However, if it comes too fast for her to go underground, you will need to put her in the ground and cover her with earth. Put a leather strap in her mouth to prevent her from biting her tongue. Never try to immobilize her. If it lasts longer than two minutes…" Gaara glanced down, the proud line of his shoulders slumping for a second, "the Sand Eye will tell me, and I will be there immediately. Understood?"

"You're going to be _watching_ us?"

Gaara's expression clearly communicated, '_Are you an _idiot?_' _Thankfully, he didn't say it, only settling for a sharp nod.

Naruto breathed an internal sigh of relief when Kakashi didn't protest, but instead nodded at the walls rising in the distance.

Konoha.

The walls bristled with spikes, but even those didn't impede his view of the Hokage tower, and the Hokage Mountain scraping the sky behind it. His blood thundered in his ears, and he dropped back to join the other jinchuuriki, Gaara following.

"Ready?" he asked them.

Noboru stared at the mountain, his eyes fixed on Sarutobi's face, immortalized in rock. "No." A flash of a grin. "Are you?"

Naruto laughed in a pitiful attempt to disguise his nervousness, nudged Katashi with his elbow and nodded at Shinobu, who was following them, a goofy grin spread across her face.

"Hell, no," he said cheerfully, before yelling at Shinobu, "What's up with you? Did you finally have that 'talk' with Shino?"

Katashi leered, making a vulgar gesture.

"Shut up!" Shinobu blushed. "He's very intelligent. Did you know that his kikai, unlike all other Coleoptera, don't go through a complete metamorphic cycle?"

"Uh," Katashi said blankly.

Yugito swooped in, pausing beside Shinobu. "Are these two wastes of air bothering you?"

"No!" Naruto stuttered, "and look, we're almost there!"

Yugito glanced at the gates, her lips curling into a sneer. "Great." The walls stretched high above- and he could hear the life of Konoha from inside, could hear the tinny music plinking out of old radios and flags snapping in the breeze and voices, so many voices that he had never thought to hear again.

His mouth was dry; his palms were wet; he licked at his lips and straightened, the jinchuuriki clustering around him, the nine exiles taking comfort in each other one last time.

Sasuke met his eyes from in front, a silent promise- '_We're going to have a Talk'_- in his gaze. Naruto nodded, tried to smile-

And now, now that they were here, in the place he had abandoned to save, he didn't want to be here. He wanted to turn tail and run, back to the Village of Shadows, back to his safe life in his safe village with his safe family, so he wouldn't have to see the hurt in the eyes of the people he'd left.

Four chuunin and a jounin were manning the gates, their eyes as big as saucers as they stared at the jinchuuriki. Varg's massive height seemed to intimidate them the most- although the horrific whip scars probably helped with that. And every single one of them had eyes bruised with exhaustion, fear, stress-

Naruto wondered if that was the look of war.

Kakashi nodded to the jounin, stepping forward.

"The jinchuuriki have arrived."

"The Hokage is waiting," the jounin said. Countersign given, the gates swung open. Gaara touched Riko's shoulder, a silent farewell.

"Be good," Naruto called after her. Riko snorted, but nodded anyway. Naruto looked for Sasuke and Sakura, narrowed his eyes, expressing just _how_ angry he'd be if they hurt her. Sakura's expression was hurt- and old thoughts screamed at him for upsetting her, but he didn't have time to process them, because-

They were inside.

Crowds lined the streets, a riot of color. Naruto heard, as if from far away, the other shinobi peeling off, leaving the jinchuuriki to walk down the open road, pinned by silence and a thousand staring eyes.

Katashi took the lead, striding down the road like he owned every single inch of it, like everybody in the crowd was privileged to gaze upon him. Naruto's skin crawled.

And there was the shop where the old lady always shafted him on milk, and there was the Ichiraku ramen stand- his stomach perked up at the thought of beef ramen- and there were all the people of Konoha, who hated him, who had hurt him.

Who he had come to save again.

The fear and hatred permeating the air around him made him want to vomit.

He glanced back, pasted a smile on his face to reassure the others. Noboru was leaning on Shinobu, the two of them lending support to each other, Noboru's eyes fixed on Sandaime's face above them, immortalized in stone, seeing the face of his enemy once more. Yugito and Gaara flanked Varg and Moriko.

Naruto glanced up, as the crowds silenced, hands covering their mouths, to see the black silhouettes of ANBU on the rooftops, the gleams of kunai in their hands and their chakra banked low, glowing with leashed potential like coals underneath the ashes. A few of them made gestures, suggesting ways for the jinchuuriki- the humans they believed to be demons- to die.

'_I guess I should've expected that,_' he thought, somehow still hurt that his former home was now so distrustful. Yugito twisted up ahead, blue eyes burning a hole in him as she bared her teeth in a feral smile, promising retribution.

The road opened out into the plaza before the Hokage Mountain, and he heard Shinobu gasp at the faces carved into the rock, even the faces of the two Hokages who had destroyed the village whose ruins lay beneath their feet, who had given birth to the Kyuubi. '_Fuckers._'

And there stood Tsunade on the platform, the Hokage dressed in full regalia, blonde hair flowing out from beneath the headdress, brown eyes piercing. Yugito flipped off one of the ANBU arrayed around the platform before bounding up the steps.

'_I really shouldn't have made her spokesperson,_' Naruto thought ruefully as he turned to kneel before Moriko.

"Ready to meet the Hokage, Moriko-chan?" he asked. She stuck her thumb in her mouth, glanced up at the intimidating figure, and shook her head, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and clinging as tightly as a limpet.

"Here," Shinobu said, kneeling and untangling Moriko's arms and picking her up.

"Thanks," he said, exhaling, long and low, staring up at the Hokage, who met his gaze with eyes like two chips of brown ice. '_Suppose I should stop stalling._' He really didn't want to meet the woman. He knew how she felt about traitors, after Orochimaru.

Naruto forced his feet to move, slowly at first, growing more confident as he reached the steps and climbed them, coming out onto the flat white expanse of the platform, following Yugito, who stood in front of the Hokage, peering up into her face, completely unimpressed.

He heard the other jinchuuriki assembling behind him, heard Noboru's cane tapping against the tile, heard Shinobu's heavy steps and Gaara's sand slithering across the stairs.

"So, the lost jinchuuriki return," Tsunade said, her voice humming with resentment, her dark eyes narrowed in Naruto's direction. Naruto winced; it seemed like she'd already decided her opinion of him before even meeting him. '_So much for diplomacy._'

Yugito grinned, then, flipped her long braid over her shoulder and folded her arms across her chest, cocking her head insolently.

"You know, Hokage-sama-" somehow, she managed to drawl the title in such a way that it sounded like the worst of insults, "we don't have to be here. We could just leave you and your pathetic little village to die."

Tsunade's hands curled into fists.

"Then why," she gritted, struggling for serenity, "are you here?"

There was nothing he could say. Not '_this is my home_' because it wasn't, hadn't been for six long years; not '_because we're good people_' because they weren't, really: Yugito had killed thousands, and would kill thousands more; Gaara had spent six years destroying all who crossed his path for nothing more than existing; Noboru had poisoned an entire village in the First Shinobi War, and seemed to not regret the act at all.

Yugito stepped forward, untied her scarf with trembling hands, exposing the black serpentine whorls of the seal surrounding her neck. Noboru pulled up his sleeve, Shinobu her pant leg, Moriko flicking her hair out of her face, all the jinchuuriki showing their seals, showing their burdens, showing the demons that would plague them for as long as they walked the earth, the demons that had been born from man's cruelty and arrogance, the demons whose jinchuuriki had fought to protect this spot and the fledgling village of Konoha, so many years ago, and had been betrayed.

She jerked a thumb at the seal, and bit out in a voice that rumbled with the voices of the mouthless dead,

"Long ago, the jinchuuriki fought and died for a village who betrayed them. We come today in the hopes that Konoha will not repeat that mistake."

* * *

Tsunade shoved her fingers through her hair, biting back a sigh. The jinchuuriki (including a skinny, fragile brunette that Gaara had transported to her office in a cloud of sand, who Naruto had introduced as Riko) were sprawled in various positions over her furniture. The northern barbarian- Varg- had the utter gall to pick his _nose_.

The utter lack of respect, of fear, rankled like a needle in a canker sore.

She rubbed at tired eyes, got up, and unrolled the map of Konoha and the surrounding area, laying it out over her desk.

The mood in the room immediately changed, the jinchuuriki gathering around the map. She noticed that they deferred to Yugito, Noboru, and Riko, giving them the best view.

"The map's of Konoha," Naruto said to Riko, his eyes- blue, so blue, and it hurt her heart to see them, perfect replicas of the picture outside her door, to know that the Yondaime's son had abandoned the village his father died for- scanning the paper.

"The village has one circular wall surrounding it, although some of the wall is made up of the Hokage Mountain."

Riko nodded, before turning her blindfolded face in Tsunade's direction. "We will need to…" she trailed off, her mouth half-open, silence filling the gap as she searched for a word. Tsunade glanced around; the jinchuuriki's eyes were fixed on Riko as if they were cheering her on, Shinobu's fingernails digging into her palms. Riko shook her head, continued,

"We will need to arrange a time at night for me to tour the village to get a proper simulacra in my mind. All light sources will need to be extinguished. All unnecessary sounds must be outlawed…" another, longer pause, another space for fear to prickle on the back of her neck, "-for the duration of two hours. Terms are non-negotiable; what time will be appropriate?"

What? Had this little waif just _demanded_ that Tsunade accommodate her wholly inconvenient request, when Tsunade had a war to wage?

Tsunade unclenched her jaw. "Will two in the morning do? You will, of course, be accompanied by two chuunin."

"Acceptable."

Tsunade blinked, shook her head, and focused again on the map. "For the past three days, we've been fending off several small-scale incursions onto our territory by Iwa and Kiri. Iwa from the northwest, Kiri from the east. Probing raids are continuous; we've lost several chuunin already, as well as three jounin. Thirty percent of our trade routes out to the surrounding villages have been cut."

"The raiders," Noboru said, tracing the outer wall with a scaled finger, "did they deploy jutsu, or did they flee?"

"The Kiri ones didn't flee. All the others did."

The boy- Katashi- scratched at his nose, nodding as he slurred something, his lips and tongue slashed with bloody lacerations. Naruto nodded, leaning his weight on his hands.

"What about weaponry? Anything new?"

Yeah. Something new, something terrible, something that proved the complete obsolescence of individual heroism when machines were there to do the killing for you.

"They're from Amegakure. Ame's always been at the forefront of technology-" she drummed her fingers on the desk, "-at least, they always were before we lost all intelligence on them.

"They're an upgraded form of the shrapnel cannons from the First War. They fire very large spheres packed with exploding tags and shrapnel; when they land, they cause decimating explosions. If the explosion doesn't get you first, the shrapnel will. We've had a few killed by them: wasn't much left but a few rags of skin and some bone."

"Range?" Noboru asked.

"Best estimate is three miles," Tsunade said bleakly. Noboru's eerie eyes flickered, his voice flat as he said,

"Definitely an improvement."

"But," Tsunade cautioned, "these things are huge. It takes a while for them to move, but once they're in position, they're deadly. A good surgical strike force could take them out while they're in motion, but these cannons are surrounded by at least fifty guards at all times. There are at least a hundred of them that we know of, but Ame's probably poured all available resources into their production."

"How many shinobi do you have?"

"Two hundred ANBU, four hundred jounin, around six hundred chuunin, seven hundred genin. We'll have more genin, soon: the Academy has sped up its graduation rate."

It hurt, low and aching in her chest, to think about it- to think about all those children who woke up one bright summer morning and had to listen to their teachers tell them that sooner than anyone knew, they too would know what it was to eviscerate a man.

It hurt to think of those children's parents, how their spirits would soon be broken beyond repair, their hearts torn in two.

What a beautiful world they lived in, where parents would have to tie their children's kimono right over left in preparation for the pyre, with trembling fingers that had cradled them as babes scant years ago.

Her fingers curled into a fist, the paper crumpling in her hand.

"How long until the war swings into high gear?" Shinobu asked.

"A week. If that."

"Status on the evacuations?" Gaara said, sand rippling on his skin.

"The daimyo, his household, and all of his soldiers are being safeguarded in the ANBU compound. Kerumigakure-" Varg jerked at the name, the scent of ozone permeating the close air of her office, his broad shoulders hunching as Shinobu laid a comforting hand on his arm, "-is evacuated; all of their shinobi have been integrated. About half of the other villages have all evacuated here; the others are taking their chances."

Tsunade felt her stomach clench; the jinchuuriki weren't going to be happy with the next bit. "The Council wants to speak to all of you."

"The… Council?" Noboru said, pinning her beneath his strange gaze. "Are we lapdogs, then, to be at their beck and call?"

"Not at all. I don't know what they want." But she knew- deep in her heart, she knew.

She had been there that day, watching as the Council gazed down with unfeeling eyes at those poor creations, those first jinchuuriki, as the First War drew to its aching conclusion.

She had watched as Konoha- her village, her life, her _everything_- betrayed the promise.

She still remembered those terrible words.

'_Konoha has no need of your services any longer._'

She still remembered how the light in those jinchuuriki's eyes, those sad martyrs, flickered and went out.

But it had been necessary, the jinchuuriki's presence too destabilizing, too demoralizing for the fledgling village to deal with.

Even though those doomed souls hadn't deserved what they'd gotten… it had been necessary.

Yugito went back to the overstuffed armchair in the corner, flopping into it and hanging her legs over the arm. Tsunade bit her lip in an attempt to keep herself from saying something. She was thankful for Naruto's interruption.

"What country's the most dangerous at the moment?"

Tsunade drummed her fingers on the desk for a moment, contemplating, before she grabbed a pencil and scribbled a few marks on the map, showing the known positions of scouting parties.

"Right now, Ame and Iwa are the two that have been most aggressive. Kiri is still transporting most of their forces overseas to our shores; Kumo will be at our borders in a few days. Suna just crossed yesterday. Population-wise, Kumo and Iwa are strongest."

She reached for her cup of sake and drained it, the thin rice wine burning down her throat- not enough to even get her tipsy, even though now that the world was burning down around her, all she wanted to do was drink and forget.

But she was a leader, and could not.

Katashi said something, his words so distorted by the bloody teeth in his mouth that they sounded like cloth ripping. Naruto turned to Tsunade, blinked when he realized that she couldn't understand Katashi, his face clouding over with a strange mixture of sorrow and anger.

"Katashi wants to be deployed against Kiri. He can destroy most of their boats while they're still at sea."

"I haven't figured out the deployments, yet," Tsunade said. Something red and bloody flickered in Varg's eyes, and Tsunade knew that reason died long ago in him. He growled.

"I don't think you understand, Hokage," Noboru said, his voice light, friendly, terrifying as Tsunade felt the Sokou's chakra- green and burning- slither against her skin.

"We have our own demands." He fished out a rolled-up sheet of paper, handed it to her with a formal bow, scales glinting green in the light. "I would suggest you read that before tomorrow." The voice of the Butcher of Kusu slithered into her ears as he said, smiling, "Katashi's not asking you. He's _telling_ you."

The cup shattered in Tsunade's hand, her teeth grinding against each other as she felt every muscle in her body tremble, her heartbeat as loud and fast as a war drum.

She didn't recognize her own voice. "You think you can waltz into my village and tell me how to run my own goddamn _war_?"

Yugito's smile was as thin and sharp as a razor.

"Yes."

Tsunade closed her eyes, bit her lip, felt blood well in the cut as she slowed her breathing. The _nerve_ of these people, these sociopaths, to stand here and bicker with her as her shinobi died in blood and pain and fear to defend their home!

"What about the Council, Naruto?" Gaara said. Tsunade opened her eyes, followed his gaze.

Uzumaki was a… cipher. She had read his school records: he had been a failure, with nothing to his name but the Kyuubi's chakra. Terrible control, terrible understanding of theory, having little mental aptitude for anything but foolish jokes.

The man in front of her resembled those pictures and descriptions only superficially. He had stayed mostly silent, leaving the others to do the talking. Like all of the jinchuuriki, he was shorter than the average, and skinny- although Riko was alarmingly so. Only Shinobu seemed to have the optimum weight for her size.

But Naruto had spent six years with representatives of the Great Villages, all shinobi with their village's jutsus, not to mention Uzumaki's own, potentially boundless chakra reservoir… He could easily be the most dangerous of the jinchuuriki.

They would need to test him. Sasuke would no doubt be eager for the opportunity.

Uzumaki looked around the room at the other jinchuuriki, the others all meeting his gaze, a wolf pack ready to hunt and kill at his command. He unfolded his arms, shrugging.

"Can't hurt to see what they want. After all," his blue gaze- suddenly harsh as Gaara's and Yugito's- flickered in her direction, "we have the power here."

Naruto smiled. "Let's go see what the old goats want, then."

They left the Hokage's office, and Naruto stared out the window before him, at a city where wagons of weapons rattled down the streets, where the Academy students pelted targets with a barrage of kunai, their aim made true by the knowledge that soon those targets would be people, where the fading trickle of refugees stumbled through the gates.

It was noon by his watch.

It was twilight for the last remnants of a world without war.

* * *

**Annotations**

"_Long ago, the jinchuuriki fought and died for a village who betrayed them. We come today in the hopes that Konoha will not repeat that mistake." _ - Based off a line spoken by Haldir in the movie version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

The last two lines are a reference to the most famous section in the Pulitzer-prize winning book, The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. It covers the causes and first months of World War One. The first section covers the state funeral of Edward VII of England, and ends, "_The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again._"

* * *

**A/N:** All comments and criticisms are greatly appreciated! Questions should go in the forum linked in my profile.


	24. Chapter 24

**A/N:** I received a beautiful picture of Moriko, done by Amsuhl. The link is in my profile; you should all go look at it and marvel at its awesomeness! Any questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. Hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

_This is the end we won't take any more  
Say goodbye  
to the world you live in  
You have always been taking  
but now you're giving._

_- _'Seek and Destroy' by Metallica

* * *

The Council Chamber seemed to have been created to be intimidating: a high domed ceiling, plastered with mosaic tiles, curved overhead, lamps flickering on the walls, casting shadows over the blank masks of the ANBU stationed around the room. Tsunade introduced the elderly shinobi glaring down on them, the twelve Council members each nodding in their direction as they were introduced.

Osamu spoke first, leaning forward, his hooked nose and beady eyes reminding Naruto of a crow.

"Welcome to Konoha; we appreciate your prompt arrival. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances, we are unable to welcome you in the manner that you… deserve."

Naruto bit back the urge to sneer. Danzo, his entire side swathed in bandages, shifted, coughed, the sound thick and full of phlegm, before croaking,

"We have decided to pay each of you a small stipend in return for your services. You will stay in the ANBU barracks, so that the Daimyo might be protected from all attacks. The Hokage has been tasked with ascertaining the optimum deployment for each of you, so that you can be useful to the fullest extent."

Varg stirred, lightning crackling blue-white over his fingers as he stood straighter, shifted from foot to foot, scarred muscles flexing, his bearded mouth flattening in a frown. Moriko grabbed onto his leg, babbling- the Council members' brows rose- and Varg blinked, the lightning disappearing as he bent down and picked her up, settling her on his shoulders.

They were going to order _them _around?

Naruto snickered, before he threw his head back and roared with laughter, the other jinchuuriki smirking. The Councilors shifted, exchanged confused glances, the ANBU around the chamber bristling at the insult to the Council.

Rokorou narrowed his dark eyes, his voice as creaky as an old rocking chair as he wheezed, "And what is so amusing, Uzumaki?"

"Just the fact that you think that you can order us around and treat us like slaves, when really, you should be bowing and groveling on the floor in thanks."

"What-" Homura started, banging the tip of her cane on the floor.

Gaara spoke for the first time, low and dark, the glass grains in the pouch at his hip hissing against each other like a infuriated viper in an intimidating display of power. "If you think that you can treat us like dogs, then you are going to be disabused of that notion very, very quickly."

"You decided to fight for Konoha," one of the other Councilors said, chin jutting out in stubbornness, "and that makes you soldiers, subject to our command."

Naruto blinked.

They did _not_ just say that.

He glanced around at the others, seeing similar expressions of bewilderment. Riko shrugged.

They did say that, and the expectant expressions on those aged faces confirmed it.

Naruto straightened up, ran his fingers through his hair- it was sweaty, the air in the Council chamber thick and close- as he thought of what to say, and turned to Riko.

"Riko," he said, "Would you take Moriko outside for a little bit?"

Riko frowned, seemed poised to argue, but finally shrugged, taking Moriko from Varg and plodding out of the hall. Thank God she didn't argue; it would have completely destroyed the illusion of a united front. The door shut behind her with a soft 'click'.

"Now," Naruto said, turning back to the Council, his lips curled in a strange smile, fraught with danger, "let me clarify something for you."

The ANBU stationed near the door took a step forward, but Danzo waved them off, the half of his face that they could see crinkled in amusement.

"We are not your dogs. We are not your servants, or your soldiers, or your slaves. We may have been created as weapons of war, but that doesn't mean that we have to be; that we have to sit here and be insulted by the very people who were-" he grinned, "-too _fucking_ _weak_ to save their village without our help." Danzo's smile disappeared, a ripple of fury reverberating through the room.

"And I know that you were there when those three jinchuuriki fought for Konoha. I know that you fought beside them." Tsunade's eyes widened, and she took a halting step, mouth open, cut off as Naruto bared his teeth, roared,

"And _I know _what happened to them. But you don't! You pieces of _shit_, you betrayed them, and sent them off to _die_! After all they gave you, all the blood and sweat and tears, you threw them away like yesterday's trash."

He stopped, chest heaving, his veins singing with fury as he whispered, "Do you want to know how they died?"

Koharu's lips twitched, hands covered in tissue-paper-skin entwining; Naruto turned on her, stalked forward, bit out,

"Yeah. They died. Not a single one of them lived past forty. And they would have, if you hadn't broken your promise. And they died-"

He took a shuddering breath, glanced at Yugito, who met his eyes, blank expression morphing into a leering smile- the smile she had worn so long ago on the island of Kiri, when Gai's team had fallen before her like wheat before a scythe. Naruto turned back to the Council, jerked his head in Yugito's direction.

"Having the jinchuuriki of the Nekomata around is pretty useful when you want to find out how someone died. She knows exactly how they went." Hiroshi's face was bloodless with guilt; Osamu's throat bobbed in a convulsive swallow.

Yugito stared straight ahead, eyes flickering back and forth between swirling, inky black and a blue pale as the sky as she recited, "Hotaka, jinchuuriki of the Hokou, died at the age of sixteen from a katana blade severing his spinal cord just below the first lumbar vertebrae. It was approximately seven hours before he died. He screamed the entire time.

Takehiko, jinchuuriki of the Shukaku, died at the age of thirty-eight from massive second- and third-degree burns over every inch of his body. He held his daughter, Yoko, despite the incredible pain and his skin sloughing off with every touch, until she died from a neurotoxin. Only after her death did he allow himself to pass on."

Gaara stared down at the floor, his hands behind his back, his eyes hidden from view, his back as straight as an arrow as he tried to hide the grief welling up inside him. Grief for the strange curse of the Shukaku, perhaps brought on by the monk who became the demon's sacrifice for his child, that everyone they loved seemed doomed to die? Naruto turned back to Yugito, who continued, despite the Council's silent entreaties- he could see them in their eyes- to stop.

Yugito bit her bottom lip, black fire flaring beneath the bandages on her arms, her mouth a thin line as she finished, "Jirou, jinchuuriki of the Nekomata, passed on at the age of seven. His pelvis was crushed into several hundred pieces. His intestines were perforated; peritonitis set in as bacteria multiplied in his abdominal cavity." She swallowed, clenched fists trembling. "It took two days."

"So don't you _dare _order us around, or even _think_ that you can betray us the way you betrayed those jinchuuriki," Naruto said, his voice as loud as thunder in the still room. The Council's aged faces were pale- Homura looked sick. "Because it's your fault they died. You have no idea how lucky you are that we've decided to come and fight, but your luck will run out the moment you even try to fight against us.

"I love Konoha. I'm going to stay and fight for my friends, no matter what happens, but the other jinchuuriki-" he glanced at them, and they nodded their agreement, "-don't have any reason to stay. If you betray them, or don't give us what we want- and really, they're very simple terms- they're going to leave," he shrugged, "and they're going to leave with my full support. And without them," he grinned, delighting in the fury etched in those old faces, "you're fucked. So really, there's nothing you can do but give us what we want."

Osamu spluttered, incoherent with rage, while Homura and Koharu conferred, before Homura leaned forward, her face gleaming golden like an ancient statue in the flickering lamplight.

"How can you love Konoha? You _left_ it," Homura said, her knotty hands curling on her walking stick.

Of _course _they would say that. Of course these bitter old crones, who had fought and died beside the first jinchuuriki and given them up as beasts, would focus on that issue- his leaving- and not on their own fucking _survival_. He clenched his teeth, sucking in a harsh breath in an attempt at calm.

"There was a reason," he said, remembering visions of rain and tears and Chidori tearing like a firestorm through his chest. "But now is not the time for that. Right now, you've got the armies of four of the Great Villages bearing down on you, not to mention the ten or so vassal villages that are going to get in on the action. You have at least fifty thousand shinobi battering at the gates, with more coming. You're standing on the brink of total destruction, and all you can think about is _why I left_? Are you _honestly_ that blind?!"

Tsunade looked too stunned to speak. Osamu's mouth flapped open and shut like a fish, no sound issuing.

There was a very long silence in the room as the Council stared at the jinchuuriki.

Varg yawned, breaking the moment, completely oblivious to the twenty or so death glares aimed squarely at him, and stared in Naruto in silent entreaty. Even Noboru looked bored with the proceedings, twisting and untwisting the head of his cane, the tiny knife hidden inside the cane glinting in the light.

'_Okay, okay, I'm with you. Time to get out of here._'

Naruto met Danzo's gaze, crossing his arms over his chest. "Look. We're tired, we smell, and frankly, we're sick of your presence. So we're going to leave now, and, as of today, we are going to deal with you solely through Tsunade." He smiled, knowing how insulted they must be at his casual dismissal of them as being too insignificant to waste any more time on.

"And at the moment, you don't have any choice but to comply with our terms, so unless you want to end this war either dead or wishing you were, you'll give in. You've got twenty-four hours to have the contract that Tsunade has delivered to us, signed and sealed by the entire Council and the Hokage."

He turned back to the others, jerked his head at the door. "Ready to go?"

And they went.

The last words Naruto heard before the door shut behind them was Koharu leaning over to murmur to Danzo,

"I don't know what effect these jinchuuriki will have upon our enemies… but by God, they frighten me."

* * *

"Nice digs," Katashi said, round-eyed with wonder as the jinchuuriki crowded into the front hall of the apartment they'd been given, dropping their packs with loud thumps. It was beside the ANBU compound where the Daimyo and his family were staying- for 'strategic purposes', although it was really just more of a hastily-put-together compromise.

Naruto nodded, helping Shinobu shove the packs into the closest closet, the air stinking of mothballs and dust. Still, it was a hell of a lot better than his old apartment- it actually had more than two rooms! Yugito made a beeline for the kitchen, opening and closing all the cabinet doors and staring at the dishes with naked lust, while Katashi bounded straight for the largest bedroom with a yell of "Dibs!"

Naruto shared a roll of the eyes with Gaara, before he checked out the place. Nine bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, three bathrooms, and a storage room, all decorated plainly with well-worn oak furniture and gray carpet. It looked like a prison compared to the apartment that Katashi had lived in with Rei, back in Kiri.

Varg took the bedroom next to Moriko's and began flicking the lightswitch on and off, Gaara the one next to Riko's, while Shinobu took the one beside Noboru's. He kept waking up more and more often now, consumed with agony from old war wounds, so Shinobu had gotten a lot of practice in geriatric pain relief- although Noboru tried to hit her when she called him 'geriatric'.

Naruto returned to the living room in time to help Varg and Gaara spread their sculptures around on the empty bookshelves and the oak mantle over the tiny fireplace. Moriko followed them, wriggling into the fireplace and staring up the chimney, her clothes quickly becoming black with soot.

"Ivy," she said, grabbing at a handful of emerald ivy sprouting from cracks in the stone and presenting it to Varg. Varg crouched, inspected it, and smiled, ruffling her hair.

"Good," he replied, before handing her one of his older sculptures, a wooden horse with Moriko's name carved into it in shaky kanji. Naruto grinned at the scene, before turning to Yugito.

"Hey, Yugito, are you going to just hunker down in the kitchen and call that your bedroom?"

Yugito answered without turning away from the scratched wooden counter where she was already gathering the ingredients for sukiyaki, her kusarigama resting on the battered kitchen table in a bizarre juxtaposition of domesticity and violence.

"Yes, Naruto, I'm going to voluntarily sleep on a tile floor next to a dishwasher."

"Just checking!"

"Thanks for the concern."

"Naruto," Noboru called. He turned around, frowning as he caught sight of the thick packets of paper in Noboru's hand.

"What's that?"

Noboru flipped through them, squinting, his gray goatee twitching in a frown as he leaned on his cane. "Forms for us to fill out so that the Hokage can get a better grip on our abilities, apparently. There's a section where we check off what kinds of elemental jutsus we can use, one for writing out any jutsus we use, the styles of taijutsu we are versed in, et cetera and so on."

Naruto sighed. "Time for a working lunch, I guess."

"You'd be right," Yugito said as she elbowed past him, juggling a large iron bowl full of tofu and meat and a smaller one full of raw eggs, plopping them down on the coffee table with a loud 'thunk!'.

The others filtered back in, Katashi covered in dust from exploring the empty rooms, all sprawling out in various positions: Noboru, of course, took the only easy chair, sinking into it with a sigh of relief, while Katashi, Shinobu, and Yugito squeezed together on the ratty brown couch. Gaara leaned against the side of the couch, Riko wedging herself against him. Naruto flopped down on the scratchy carpet, wriggling until he found a more comfortable position. Varg and Moriko both occupied themselves with finishing off the sukiyaki, leaving their forms to Noboru.

The sound of pens scratching and chewing filled the companionable silence. Once in a while Yugito muttered a sarcastic comment, which Gaara answered with similar cynicism. Katashi read the form out loud under his breath, brow furrowed in concentration, sucking on the end of his pen.

Naruto filled out the form, checking off his three elemental affinities- wind, lightning, and earth; he was best with wind, but not a bad hand with the others- before scribbling down all the jutsus he knew. It took two pages to get them all, and by the end his hand was curled against itself with cramps.

Tap, tap.

The jinchuuriki looked up from their forms, glancing around.

Tap, tap.

"Uh, Naruto?" Noboru said with practiced blandness. "There appears to be a very large bird at the window."

"You're right." In Konoha, having a bird show up at your window was never a good thing- there was a mission, or you were needed in the Hokage's office or the hospital. But at least it wasn't a raven- when a raven showed up at the window bearing a white scroll, it meant that your son, or your daughter, or your mother or father, wasn't coming home.

The ravens were going to be very busy in the months ahead.

"I'll get it." He pushed himself off the floor and ambled to the window, opening it with a screech of rusty metal. The sandy-colored hawk stared at him with beady yellow eyes, sticking out its foot and snapping its beak at him. "Okay, okay…" He untied the bag and threw it over his shoulder, before collecting everybody's forms and tying them onto the hawk's leg. The bird screeched, making his ears ring, before it took off and flew in the direction of the Hokage's office, its shadow long and curved like sword blades against the pavement, already darkening with sunset.

"You're _welcome_," he yelled after it.

"Hey, we got paid already!" Katashi had upended the sack, taking no heed of the fact that his pen had broken and smeared blue ink all over his teeth, and was dividing the coins and bills, letting Moriko play with the larger coins. Riko rolled one thoughtfully over her knuckles, before she sat up, planting an elbow in Gaara's stomach, and reached for her notebook and pencil, scribbling out a list.

"Will you purchase these items for me with my share, Shinobu?" Shinobu looked the list over and grinned, bouncing in her seat.

"Of course! I haven't ever been shopping, but I'll do my best."

"We're going shopping?" Gaara said, his expression a blend of curiosity and apprehension.

"I think it'd be fun," Noboru interjected, standing up and helping Katashi clear off the sukiyaki dishes.

"I'm going to stay here with Riko," Gaara said, borrowing Riko's notebook and scribbling his own list, his kanji elegant constructions, much better than Naruto's hyperactive doodles. "We're working on figuring out a new strategy for shogi. Could you get these titles for me, Noboru?"

"Am I that predictable, that you know where I'm going already?"

"Yes," Varg said, deadpan as he hoisted Moriko up on his shoulders, Moriko grabbing his hair and yanking.

"See if I save _you _from poisonous snakes again," Noboru muttered.

"I just want to know when we all decided to go shopping." Naruto looked around for support, but found none.

"Just now," Shinobu answered, giving him a glare that said, '_We are going shopping and neither hell nor high water is going to stop us.'_

Naruto scratched his head, sighing. He didn't want to go out- out where he would see all the people he left, out where Iruka and Konohamaru and the Ichiraku guy all were, out where he'd had to face everything he had given up.

But there was no dealing with Shinobu when she got in full-on den mother mode. "Yes, ma'am."

* * *

Tsunade stared down at the report on the jinchuuriki, gritting her teeth as irritation thundered through her head. Of all the _idiotic _things to buy…

"Did you know," she said to Shizune, who jerked upright from where she was hunched over a book on shrapnel removal in the corner, "that the jinchuuriki haven't bought a single military item with their salaries, and yet have managed to spend all of it?"

"_What?_" Shizune craned her neck to try and see the report, frowning. "What could they be _buying?_"

Tsunade shook her head, running her finger down the list, resisting the urge to laugh. _Pocky_? Really?

"Well, Yugito bought about three boxes of origami paper- strange, she doesn't seem the type- while Shinobu cleaned out a pocky stand." She turned a page, biting her lip at the reporting ANBU's undisguised horror at the idea of eating that much pocky. "Noboru acquired books, mostly on the First War, and Varg got a few hundred pounds of wood."

"Wood?" Shizune said blankly, setting her book down on her lap, her fingers stained with ink. Tonton seemed to share her bewilderment, oinking.

"Yes, although who knows _what _he was thinking. Katashi just got an incredible amount of junk food. Gaara bought books as well- on almost every subject he could find- and Riko somehow managed to get her hands on about thirty different kinds of nail polish and makeup. Strange, considering she can't see it even if she's wearing it. Moriko bought plants with her share. Naruto spent it all on cup ramen. I should probably warn them that they're all going to die of malnutrition at this rate."

She felt horrible for saying that, shame boiling acidic and harsh in her stomach. Who was she to judge them? They'd grown up without families, income, or any of the things that so many people took for granted. Their strange purchases- more than their short statures or the lost look in Varg's eyes or the seething fury lurking inside Gaara's frame- only underscored that sad fact.

"So you've read the forms?" Shizune said, nodding in the direction of the stacked papers. Tonton oinked, butting her head against Shizune's ankle until she picked her up. Tsunade nodded, leaning back in her chair and flipping through the pages.

"Yeah. I think what I'm going to do is only send the jinchuuriki out with Konoha shinobi at their side, just so that I have an unbiased source on their abilities. Katashi wants to be deployed to the coast, so I'm going to send Team 8 with him, and Naruto if he'll agree; if we can destroy most of the Kiri fleet, then that'll give us some breathing room to focus on pushing back the other enemies.

"As for Noboru, he's so frail that a well-placed kick could kill him."

"Osteoporosis?" Shizune pursed her lips, already thinking of bone density supplements they could administer.

"Growing up in a war doesn't lend itself to good nutrition. But he wants to teach, so I'll send him to the Academy to work with Iruka. Moriko will be at the Academy, but we could use her in her off-hours to help with the new fields. I'm hoping Riko can dig a few wells so we're not dependent on the Nakano or Katashi for water, since her health issues preclude her taking part in open battle."

Shizune circled the desk and leaned over her shoulder, looking at the papers spread across the desk. "Wait; Shinobu's going to stay a _medic-nin_? With her power?"

Tsunade exhaled, rubbing at her eyes. "I'm going to call her in and talk to her a little bit. With her level of chakra, she could be a huge asset on the battlefield."

"She could also be an incredible asset in the hospital," Shizune pointed out. "She could save people that even, with all due respect, my lady, you couldn't."

'_There goes my title of best medic-nin on the continent._' Tsunade grumbled under her breath before grabbing another form, this one filled with Noboru's crabbed handwriting.

"As for Varg, I'm going to deploy him against Kumo, with Neji, Tenten, and Team 10. Their abilities are well-suited to fighting against Kumo, but Neji is in danger from their long-standing feud with the Hyuuga. Varg can hopefully deflect some of their attacks. Yugito's with Kakashi- he can break any genjutsu they use on her. Gaara, Lee, and Gai are going to lead the campaign against Suna."

"I'll go send a message to Shinobu requesting her presence, then," Shizune said, letting Tonton down and heading for the door.

"Thanks; would you ask Iruka to go meet with Noboru, too, so they can discuss their curriculum?"

Shizune nodded and left, Tonton trotting at her heels.

Tsunade threw herself back into strategy, papers flying out from her office and to her delegates at an incredible rate. She'd be proud of herself, if she wasn't so exhausted.

Half an hour later, there was a timid knock at the door. Izumo opened it, took a step inside, and snapped his arm up into a salute.

"Yes, Izumo?"

He let his hand fall, jerking his chin at the hallway behind him. "The jinchuuriki of the Hachibi is here as you requested, ma'am."

Great; this would give her an excuse to stop writing for a little bit. She shook her hand to loosen it, nodding. "Thank you, Izumo. Send her in- oh, and I need you and Kotetsu to go to the jinchuuriki's apartment at two-'o-clock in the morning. You're going to give Riko Sasaki a tour of the village."

Izumo blinked, glanced at the papers on her desk, as if they were going to give him a reason for the strange request. Tsunade bit back the urge to tell him that all those papers were going to give him as a blinding headache. Izumo seemed to realize what he was doing and shook himself, straightening. "Yes, ma'am. Anything else?"

"No, thank you."

He nodded, stepped out of the way, and gestured for Shinobu to enter. Tsunade sat up, interested despite herself. She hadn't gotten a chance to get a good look at the jinchuuriki on their own; they all seemed to work as part of a whole, so getting to see one on their own was an opportunity not to be wasted.

Shinobu was short and sturdy, her shoulders and hips broad inside the dingy black clothing she wore. She moved with the aura of someone who was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible: although it was rather difficult to be inconspicuous when you had a sword spouting green flames dangling from your hand. Her dark eyes were curious behind her spectacles as she padded over to the desk, shifting from foot to foot, shoulders hunched as her gaze flickered from the floor to Tsunade.

"Hi… um, Tsunade? Can I call you Tsunade?"

Tsunade succeeded in not closing her eyes in exasperation, and simply waved her to the wooden chair in front of her beaten-up desk.

"Yes, you may."

Shinobu grinned, her expression blinding, her moods mercurial. "Great! Because I figure that since you're a medic-nin, and I'm a medic-nin, and we'll probably be working together on the really hard cases, that we should just go ahead and be on a first-name basis because that makes it so much easier and saves breath and-" Shinobu ran out of air, whatever she had wanted to say going unuttered.

"Okay. But actually, that's kind of what I've called you here to talk about."

Shinobu blinked, then rooted in her pocket and pulled out a stick of pocky, shoving it into the corner of her mouth.

Tsunade was inordinately proud of herself for resisting the urge to take it away from her.

"I just wanted to know why you're so adamantly against going out and serving in combat? You're a jinchuuriki-"

Shinobu leaned forward, her eyes glacial behind the glasses. "So? Does the fact that I'm a jinchuuriki mean that I have to be a killer?"

Tsunade sat back in her chair, her mouth going dry. She hadn't meant to imply that; not at all!

"No, of course not-"

Shinobu crunched down on her pocky, then pushed the entire stick into her mouth and devoured it in two bites, glancing around at the maps tacked up on Tsunade's office walls, the maps covered in pins of troop movements and the positions of shrapnel cannons, before turning back, lips twisting in a smile that had no comfort in it.

"Good. Because I'm different from the other jinchuuriki: I will_ not _kill."

Tsunade exhaled a short, sharp breath of frustration, bit her lip, and leaned forward, as if she could _make _her understand by being emphatic-

"But you're the jinchuuriki of the Hachibi! Your power is second only to Naruto's; why would you want to stay in the hospital instead of fighting with the rest and putting your power to good use?"

Shinobu bowed her head, her dark hair slipping forward to hide her face, her posture that of a chastised child. Tsunade ran her fingers through her hair, stifled the urge to apologize.

Why couldn't she ever do _anything_ right when it came to the jinchuuriki?

"I fought once, and after that I swore an oath as a medic-nin to never harm anyone, ever again," Shinobu said, her voice swallowed up and lost in the close-curtained office. "I was eight years old, and Kusa was under attack by missing-nin." Her fingers curled into white-knuckled fists on her lap. "They dragged me out of the kitchen. I had been trying to make onigiri. Then they put Kusanagi in my hand, and shoved me into the battle.

"I…" her voice was flat, and toneless, and as weary as the voices of the shinobi from the Second War, who had fought for five long, long years, and lost for all their pain, "I got angry. I was angry because I had this _thing_ in me, and I didn't know what it was, and I didn't know why I had it. But I knew that the shinobi of Kusa put it in me. I knew that they were the ones that stuck me in the medical library and wouldn't let me leave. I knew that I wasn't worth anything to them, except as a tool."

The sunlight slanted in through the window, red and gold on the walls, and the distant thunder of cannons resounded through the air. Tsunade swallowed. She had heard tales of the Hachibi, of its legendary cruelty and malice toward all things- and to think of that beast caged inside this small woman's body made the hair prickle on the back of her neck.

But she had to know.

"What happened?" she whispered, afraid to speak any louder, as though the noise would stir the Hachibi from its sleep, to burn Konoha to the ground with copper fire.

Shinobu didn't look up. "I threw Kusanagi aside…" she shifted on the hard chair, her fists curling even tighter, "…and I transformed." She raised one hand, ran it through her hair, coughed up a little laugh, the sound wet and sick and sad. "I don't remember much. I remember that it hurt- although I guess that makes sense, since I had to grow wings and scales and seven new heads. I just remember… being so _angry_, and so _happy_ that now I could make them hurt just as bad as I did."

She shrugged, swallowed, entwined her fingers as if to keep from fidgeting, her shoulders hunched inside her threadbare shirt, worn gray with use.

"After that, I just remember waking up in the middle of an empty street, with bodies all around me. There was a boy on my left side. His eye was hanging out by the optic nerve, and I could see flies swarming in the socket. Most of the dead had…" Shinobu shuddered, a bone-deep ripple of revulsion passing over her skin, and Tsunade felt bile- hot and thick and sweet-sour- climb in her throat. She resisted the urge to gag as Shinobu said, haunted, "…_chunks_ missing."

No; that couldn't be true. This chatterbox girl in front of her who had spent her entire salary on pocky couldn't have- And Tsunade had heard the stories, but that didn't compare to hearing them in this tired woman's voice, from the woman cursed to bear the burden of the Hachibi's hatred.

Shinobu wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, as if trying to scrub off phantom blood, and looked up.

Her eyes gleamed copper, the liquid metallic color overtaking her irises, and reptilian as she tried to smile, the expression a pathetic parody of human joy.

"Then I realized… that I wasn't hungry anymore."

* * *

**Annotations**

"_I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they frighten me." _- Spoken by the first Duke of Wellington about the mercenaries that joined his army at Waterloo.

* * *

**A/N:** Any questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. All reviews are loved and cherished.


	25. Chapter 25

**A/N:** Here's the next chapter; hope you enjoy it. All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile. This chapter also contains a pretty graphic medical scene, so if that squicks you, sorry.

* * *

_So many dreams were broken and so much was sacrificed  
Was it worth the ones we loved and had to leave behind?  
So many years have passed, who are the noble and the wise?  
Will all our sins be justified?_

- 'Hand of Sorrow' by Within Temptation

* * *

The last light of the sunset shone in through the window, dust motes twirling in the sunbeams. Naruto hummed under his breath, dipping the brush back into the bottle of nail polish and painting a last swipe across Riko's fingernail. Riko kept shifting back and forth, toes curling in the carpet, and it was making it _really _hard to keep from getting nail polish everywhere.

Naruto got up at the hesitant knock on the door, capping the bottle of bright blue pigment.

"Done!"

"Does it look ae- aesthetically pleasing?" Riko asked, reaching for her blindfold to push it up.

"Riko, don't-" Naruto began, lunging for the blinds.

"Fine," she muttered, her hand dropping as she got up and wandered into the kitchen, passing by Yugito and Noboru, who had maps of the area surrounding Konoha spread out across the kitchen table. Shinobu was still at the meeting with the Hokage.

"Thanks," Naruto called after her, turning back to open the door as another knock split the air.

Iruka blinked at him, his hand raised in mid-knock. Slowly, as if moving through water, his hand dropped to his side, his eyes wide, as if he was burning Naruto's face into his brain. The papers beneath his other arm fluttered to the hall floor.

Naruto stared, felt his stomach twist inside him like an enraged beast. Iruka was the same- the spiky hair a little shorter, a few wrinkles (not smile lines; stress lines, and he shied away from the thought that he was the cause of them) dusted across his face- but the scar and the eyes and the warmth and the chuunin vest were still the same.

'_I-_' And it had been so long, and he'd left Iruka- the first person in Konoha to love him, to see him as more than a burden- without even telling him why, or saying goodbye, or-

"_Naruto?_" Iruka whispered, taking a halting step.

"I-" he blinked tears out of his burning eyes, felt his lips twitch into a trembling smile as he lifted his hands in a useless request for a hug, let them fall again. 'I'm… sorry?"

Iruka got it- he always got it- and yanked him into his embrace, and it was different, the fit was all wrong, but it was _Iruka_ and that was all that mattered. Naruto grabbed Iruka, held on tight, let 

his head rest against Iruka's shoulder, like he had done when he was small, felt the harsh cloth of the vest dampen with his tears.

He heard a rough sob from beside his ear, turned his head long enough to mutter, the words scraping his throat raw,

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm-"

"It's okay-"

Naruto turned his head back as he caught a glimpse of the other jinchuuriki peering around the doorframe- Katashi's mouth was open, bloody and sharp- before Noboru suddenly came to his senses and harried them away, the others disappearing back into the living room.

Iruka pulled away, his hands resting on Naruto's shoulders, as if he needed the contact to prove that Naruto was really here, and not just a figment of smoke and mirrors. It was too hard to meet those brown eyes full of unconditional love, love that he had betrayed- he looked away, bit his lip. Iruka sighed.

"It's okay." Iruka scrubbed at his nose with the back of his hand, his smile a painful thing. "I'm sorry I didn't come earlier- I wasn't avoiding you or anything-"

"I know."

Iruka blinked hard. "I… missed you. We all did." He laughed, the sound harsher than Naruto remembered, and the harshness scalded. "It's been… a long six years without you."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you why I left."

Iruka's expression changed, his smile muted with disappointment. And that was the worst: anger, he could deal with. He'd dealt with it for years. But disappointment?

That was an even more effective weapon.

"I wish you had," Iruka said, but then he straightened up, forced his smile to strengthen. Naruto tried to think of something to say, something to talk about, finally said,

"Um… do you want to go to Ichiraku's?"

Iruka's smile became tinged with relief as he glanced at his watch. "Sure; I can come meet this Noboru later."

"Come whenever," Naruto said, closing the door behind him, "he doesn't sleep much."

Not anymore, at least; not with splinters of bone and shrapnel floating around inside him; not with his formerly-crushed pelvis still a ruin of hastily-soldered bone.

Not with the sound of the guns outside his window.

Their feet clicked on the wooden floors as they entered the stairwell, the golden light of sunset coloring the air.

"So," Iruka said, swallowing, "what have you… been up to?"

It was awkward.

It shouldn't have been awkward.

Grief pricked at the corners of his eyes, but he straightened, glanced over. "I've learned a lot of jutsu; even some healing jutsu, too, so you can stop freaking out about me not being well-rounded."

Iruka stared blankly for a moment- Naruto's smile faltered- before Iruka seemed to remember the long tirades he used to go on and laughed, although it sounded brittle.

Six years was a long time for things to be forgotten, and awkwardness to fill the gaps.

And though the love was still there- unceasing, unchanging- it wasn't the same.

* * *

"My lady!" Footsteps- light and quick, Shizune's footsteps- raced down the hallway, stopped as Shizune flung the door to Tsunade's office open. Tsunade didn't turn to look, her eyes still fixed on Shinobu's white, still face, the breath sucked from her lungs at the terrible thing Shinobu had just revealed.

"My lady," Shizune panted, "Patrol A just came back- they're in operating room C- it's bad."

The words sunk in slowly, but then Tsunade was up, moving, at the door-

"Shinobu," she called, "come with me, please."

The younger girl nearly tripped over herself as she stood, grabbing her sword and joining Tsunade. Tsunade's fingers flew through seals, and in the blink of an eye they were standing in the operating room of the hospital.

There was blood everywhere, the stench of rot and death permeating the air, the other medic-nin's scrubs dyed black with gore as they sloshed through the puddles. Tsunade took in the situation at a glance- two of the three-man patrol were already dead, their corpses white and twisted on the gurneys in the corner- while the other was hemmed in by three medics.

"We're losing him-" a medic-nin muttered to his compatriot, and Shinobu snapped into action, 

joining the team arrayed around the last gurney as she snapped gloves on. Tsunade followed.

The man on the gurney was barely recognizable as human, his entire torso blown to shreds, his face scarred and burned beyond recognition from shrapnel and flame. His left leg was destroyed, splinters of bone protruding from lacerated skin, blood pumping from the deep gash in his thigh. A medic stood over it, gray-faced, chakra sputtering as she poured more in.

'_Femoral artery's gone._'

"We can't stop the bleeding," the supervising medic said, wrist-deep in blood as she massaged the man's failing heart, green chakra glowing on her fingers as she tried to repair the ruin that shrapnel had made of his heart. "Rumiko's trying to put a patch on, but it didn't take the first time; there's too much damage, and the leg's got to go, but it'll take time we don't have-" Tsunade joined the group, adding her chakra to the supervisor's. The man's eyes rolled in his head.

They were brown, like Jiraiya's.

Shinobu elbowed her way in, scooted down the side of the gurney to hover over the man's leg, elbowing Rumiko out of the way and placing steady hands above the gushing artery.

A storm of chakra whirled out from her hands, sucked into the greedy body- and there was so _much_ of it, enough that Tsunade would be wiped out after that first pulse-

Someone gasped.

Shinobu's face was serene, like an ancient statue, as she fed more and more power into the man's body, producing platelets, urging them on, clearing infectious agents and coaxing the battered vein to knit itself back together.

The flow- the hot leap of purple spurting from his thigh- slowed to a trickle, as if a dam was slowly being built inside the gaping wound, then stopped. Shinobu didn't seem to even realize the magnitude of what she had done, moving her hands to the other, whole leg, directing chakra- and did she _ever_ run out?- into the bone marrow.

Tsunade felt the sudden rise in blood pressure beneath her fingers as Shinobu did in a few seconds what took a human body days to do.

"Tsunade," Shinobu said, her voice calm, as quiet as if she was reading a book to children, "can you come over and keep the cycle going?"

"I don't know if I have enough-"

"It's okay," and it was so frightening, the placidity in her voice, as if she hadn't just saved a man from certain death with nothing but a few bursts of incredible power, "I started the cycle. I just need you to feed a little in every time it starts to weaken, and the rest will take care of itself. I 

need to handle the leg."

Tsunade moved over to funnel chakra into the bone marrow. She hissed between her teeth- it _hurt_, the amount of chakra swirling around in the man's bones- she could feel it scalding her palms, and could only imagine the agony the patient would be in if he were conscious.

Shinobu's hand glowed green, a chakra scalpel, as she sliced through skin and muscle, exposing the gaping break in the ruined leg, where the femur ceased to be a femur and became hundreds of shards of bone. The muscle and skin retracted, exposing the old-ivory shade of the bone.

Tsunade fed more in, glancing up the patient's body to check on the others: the supervisor was still working at keeping the heart beating; Rumiko was now laboring over his lacerated hand, metacarpals pink and terrible; and the last was trying to keep the intestines from perforating as he picked pieces of shrapnel out.

Shinobu reached for her sword, the green flames brightening to a white as hot as the sun, with only the palest traces of emerald around the edges of the flames to show their color. Tsunade could feel the heat beating against her skin, sweat beading at her hairline, dampening the hair at the nape of her neck.

Shinobu lifted the sword, her eyes distant- Tsunade knew that she was in the presence of someone who was completely in their element, completely unaware of anything but the body beneath her hands- and tightened her grip, widening her stance.

"Stand back," she said softly, before the blade came down-

The stench of burning bone joined the plethora of sickness in the air as the sword- and how was it able to do this, when even the sharpest medical tool took several minutes to cut bone?- separated the ruined two-thirds of his leg from the whole third in one clean cut, cauterizing as it went.

The sword's flames died down, retreated back inside the sword, becoming only the sullen, flickering emerald that she had seen before, as Shinobu leaned the sword against the wall and glanced at the medic laboring on the man's intestines.

"Can you sew him up down here? I can take care of the peritonitis."

The man's eyes were wide, his mouth half-open, but he did as she said, swapping places. Shinobu stuck her hands inside the patient's body without hesitation, tendrils of chakra, so powerful that it glowed white, rather than the usual green, crawling over the ruined ribs, the ropy coils of internal organs, pieces of shrapnel sliding free at her coaxing, floating in the air, buoyed by chakra. The holes immediately staunched themselves, the perforated stomach knitting itself back together before Tsunade's astonished eyes, the chakra slipping, twisting through the man's body in a river of white light.

She could feel Shinobu's chakra beneath her fingers, as placid and yet as powerful as a 

slumbering beast, and the man finishing the amputation muttered a surprised thanks as the flaps of skin and muscle that he was sewing together over the newly shorn bone healed, with only a pink scar to show the suture.

Shinobu hummed beneath her breath as the chakra returned, reaching up and snatching the pieces of shrapnel- so many pieces that they filled both her hands- and flinging them into the biohazard container.

"Leg's done," the man announced, stepping back. Shinobu nodded, slid up the man's body as the supervising medic-nin stepped back, and let her hand float just above the heart that scarcely fifteen minutes ago had been on the verge of giving up forever.

Another pulse of chakra, then another, and the heart beat beneath her fingers. Shinobu grinned, bounced on her toes, sent a wave of white light around the man's open torso, mopping up one last time.

"Sew him up," Shinobu directed, the woman seeming too shocked to protest as Shinobu glanced over at the man's lacerated hand, deemed the last medic-nin's work sufficient, and picked her way over the puddles of blood to stand at the man's head, placing her hands on either side of his head.

More chakra- and how could she have _more?_ Shinobu had already put out as much chakra as Tsunade used in a month- seeped over blackened, weeping skin, Shinobu's eyes closing.

"Oh, that's not good," she muttered to herself, seeming as if she had left them all behind, her hands twisting. "Better." The blackened skin sloughed off in curls of black paper-thin material, pink, fresh skin rising to replace it like new continents from the ocean.

Tsunade felt the cycle of blood production beneath her hands slow and stop, the man's circulatory system filled once more, and stepped back, circling the gurney to watch Shinobu work.

There would be deep silver scars tracing over the man's skull for the rest of his life, but-

And the sunken nose became full again, the lost eyelids regrew, covering the rolling eyes, dark hair sprouting like grass in a field from new skin.

Long minutes passed, before Shinobu took a deep breath, opening her eyes. She braced herself against the gurney, her smile of joy trembling with exhaustion.

"Well, he's had some traumatic brain injury-" she patted the man's head, "-but nothing too serious, I was able to fix it. At most he might not remember the last week, but that's not a big deal.

"His sight and hearing aren't going to be very good, though," Shinobu said, scowling. "I tried to repair the cilia and the damage to the rod and cone cells, but I couldn't get all of it." She sighed, 

let her fingers card through the man's hair as she bestowed an apologetic look on him. "I'm sorry."

Tsunade's throat worked. Shinobu was _apologizing_? She was _apologizing_ to the man whom she had saved? She wanted to cry, she wanted to grab Shinobu and shake her and demand 'how, how, how did you _do_ that, how did you snatch this man from the jaws of death when I would've thought him doomed? How do you have such power?'

But she knew.

It was the gift of the Hachibi; the power that Shinobu had paid such a high, high price for.

It was power given by catastrophe, the catastrophe of the jinchuuriki, sacrificed for a hypocritical humanity that preached love and faith and togetherness-

But only for themselves.

The jinchuuriki were the walking symbols of man's inhumanity, man's ability to sacrifice everything for a tiny hour of peace.

They were the symbols of mankind's true self.

And their catastrophe was the catastrophe of all mankind.

* * *

Naruto attacked his tenth bowl of ramen with a vengeance, while Iruka, Ayame, and Masahiro- and how funny, that he'd only just learned the Ichiraku owner's name _now_- looked on in amusement.

Ayame had thrown her arms around him, a welcome change from the surreptitious glares and whispers as he and Iruka had walked through Konoha.

So much had changed; the crumbling brick apartment building that he used to graffiti was gone, replaced by a new structure of clean lines and shiny stone. The fountain that Academy students used to throw coins into for good luck on exams had been removed.

But he and Iruka had managed to _finally_ strike up a conversation about pranks, and it was fun to see the mischievous light in Iruka's eyes as Naruto rambled on about how he and Katashi had once hidden an exploding tag inside Shinobu's textbook on how to perform biopsies.

Iruka had asked question after question about the other jinchuuriki- and it was kind of funny, in a way, like a protective older brother vetting his younger sibling's friends. Masahiro and Ayame had enjoyed his stories, and that gave him hope-

Hope that maybe the people of Konoha could learn to accept the jinchuuriki, to honor them for 

their presence.

He hadn't had hope for so long-

It was nice to be able to hope for something again.

The Ichiraku ramen was just as good as he remembered: salty and hot with the noodles exactly the right texture.

But so little else was as he remembered it: the pinched fear on the faces of the civilians, the weary resignation on the faces of the genin, the barbed wire bristling on the walls.

"So has much changed, civilian-wise, since the beginning of the war?" Naruto asked around his mouthful. Iruka groaned in annoyance at his bad manners, but Masahiro only shrugged.

"Prices have gone up, so the supply lines are mostly cut off," Masahiro said over the sounds of his stirring, "but the shinobi are managing to keep three of them open, so we can still get our goods."

"I bet the civilians are pretty grateful to the supply line defenses," Naruto said, slurping down the last of his ramen.

There was a long silence.

Naruto started to get the crawling feeling that he'd said something he shouldn't have, as Masahiro stopped stirring, turning around. Iruka winced.

"Masa-" Iruka started, cut off as Masahiro threw a hand up, his eyes strangely intent.

"Would you like to know what a civilian's life is like? What it's _really_ like?"

Naruto felt something unseen, some buried, ancient conflict, rising to meet him as he blinked, said,

"Yeah, sure."

Masahiro nodded, while Iruka sat back, mouth pressed into a thin line. "This world," Masahiro said as he leaned his elbows on the counter, white hat drooping, "is not a world for the civilians. We are but pawns in a world that is solely for shinobi. And it's decided so early whether this world is for you.

"When you go to the Academy for the first time, they test you to see if you can produce enough chakra to be a shinobi."

Naruto frowned. He had a very vague memory of a test, although it wasn't much of one. All the kids were crowded into an auditorium, and a medic-nin walked around and put her hands on the 

kid's shoulders.

And then she'd said 'yes' or 'no' to the person following behind her with a clipboard; and he'd never really thought about that again, about the fact that the kids that were told 'no' never came back.

Masahiro tried to smile, his grin dulled by the old wound. "And if you fail… you don't know it at the time, but that's the end of all your hopes to become one of the elite. To become one of the shinobi. Because if you're not a shinobi… then what can you do?"

Iruka opened his mouth to say something, but Masahiro rolled right over his argument.

"Of course, there's Rock Lee, but he's a freak. Everyone knows that- even him. If he hadn't had Gai to sponsor him, then he'd be just like us. Do you know how many kids with just as much ambition and drive fail the test, but don't get a sponsor like Gai?"

"No," Naruto muttered, dazed by Masahiro's passion- the Ichiraku man had always seemed so _calm_. How long had this rage been stirring beneath the surface?

"I'll tell you: a lot. So they're condemned to be considered useful, but lower-class; integral, but less important. Shinobi fight the wars; shinobi bring income to the village; shinobi make up the Great Clans; shinobi are the Hokage and the Councilors."

He snorted. "Sure, the daimyo's a civilian, but he's just a figurehead. Just some silly old man sitting in a castle, thinking he's got power when he only thinks that because the Hokage is content to let him do so.

"And they try to make it seem like it's okay when you fail; when Ayame failed the test, they sent us pamphlets droning on about how civilians are an integral part of Konoha's society, and how we provide the infrastructure that makes the village work, and so on and so forth, so we could explain that to her and make her feel better. But that doesn't change things. That doesn't help the resentment when the shinobi look down on you."

Naruto shook his head to clear it; _how _had he not noticed? Was their society really that shinobi-focused, to make all the civilians feel undervalued?

Masahiro shoved another bowl of beef ramen across the counter, gesturing with his spoon, boiling ramen droplets spattering the back wall of the booth.

"And now there's a war on, and we can't do anything. All we can do is sit back and watch the shinobi fight for us; we can be doctors, but we're never as good as medic-nins; we can train to use a sword, but we'll never be as strong as someone with chakra."

Ayame didn't turn around from where she was stirring the pot, but her voice, calm and clear and lacking any hate or judgment whatsoever, carried, "Shinobi have no idea how frightened we all are. They can make chakra. They can call fire, or summon beasts, or make someone believe in 

something that doesn't exist. They can go out and fight; they can influence the outcome. We just have to sit, and go about our daily routines, and pray that the lines don't fall.

"Shinobi- as much as we love and respect them- just don't understand."

Naruto stuffed down the urge to apologize.

A bell rang out across the village, and silence swept across Konoha in a wave, as people paused, looked to the skies.

Fear, resignation, pain- all were etched on those tired faces as the people in the streets hurried away, shopping bags banging against each other. Doors slammed in distant houses. The streets emptied, until Masahiro, Ayame, Iruka, and Naruto were left alone in the square.

"What-" Naruto began.

Iruka pointed with his chin in the direction of the Hokage Tower; Naruto turned to watch, sucked in a breath as a small cloud of ravens rose in a black storm from the tower, silhouetted against the stars, the white papers tied to their legs bright in the gloom.

The ravens separated, spiraled higher over Konoha, and then, catching sight of their destinations, arrowed downward, black blots of death against the sky. Two ravens winged over to an apartment building across the square, shadows stretching across the pavement-

Naruto felt sick, his eyes burning for those people inside those unlucky apartments, who had lost everything they loved in the tap of a raven's beak upon the glass.

The raven on the second floor tapped once, twice.

He had to look away, had to leave whoever was in there their privacy-

The window slid up, and a woman- young, her brown hair pulled back into a messy bun, toothpaste smeared around her mouth- stood framed in the light, her eyes fixed upon the bird on the sill.

"_Qwork!_" the raven said, thrusting its message at her.

She stumbled back a step, dropping her toothbrush. Her lower lip trembled, tears welling, tumbling down her cheeks in silver rivers as she took a shuddering breath, face crumpling in on itself like a wadded ball of paper, her tiny hands clenching into fists,

"_Go away!_ Go away go away go _away-_"

The raven, implacable, uncaring, hopped forward once more. The woman took another step back, throwing up a warding hand, her eyes clenched shut.

"He's not-" she sobbed, "he's not.."

Something was stuck in Naruto's throat. He looked at Iruka, saw the same helpless sorrow in his eyes.

The woman's lips twisted in a painful, ingratiating smile as she fell to her knees, her head the only thing above the windowsill as she leaned forward, met the raven's eyes.

"Go away… _please_?"

It cocked its head, lifted its leg again, uncaring of human pain.

She let her head fall against the sill, her eyes- dark and helpless- gazing at that tiny little roll of white paper.

And slowly, her hands steady- for what harm could the message do, when all had already been lost?- she reached up, untied the paper, the string curling like a black snake on the windowsill as she spread the paper open, her face a ruin of grief.

The raven stepped back, launched itself off the sill, and with four great wingbeats was above the square and soaring back to the Hokage Tower, its message of sorrow delivered.

Naruto turned away from the open window, leaving the woman to her private hell. Shame boiled thick and hot- why hadn't he turned away? Why hadn't he given her that tiny, simple courtesy?

Masahiro's face was pinched and worn, Ayame's back too straight to be natural.

There was an awkward silence, and he felt the urge to run, to get back to the jinchuuriki, to his family, the only familiar thing in this village.

Because everything had moved on without him.

"Um…" he said, "I've… got to get back to the others."

Ayame nodded, while Masahiro squinted at him, shrugged, and clapped him on the shoulder with an attempt at a smile.

"It's good to have you back, Naruto. Ichiraku's missed you."

"You mean they missed my money, right?"

Masahiro snorted, grabbing his spoon and trying to rap Naruto's knuckles- but he was too fast, and the spoon whacked the countertop instead. Masahiro frowned, folding his arms across his ramen-spattered white shirt.

"Okay," he conceded, "maybe we missed your money. But we missed you, too."

Naruto tried to smile, but it was hard- so awkward, to come back to people you hadn't talked to in six long years and to deal with all their questions and the open stares- to smile when he could distantly hear the sobs from across the square.

"Yeah, it's good to be back."

Ayame swooped down to take his and Iruka's bowls, efficient and tidy as ever, smiling- a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"I just wish you'd come back at a better time," she said, turning to the sink and tying the floral-print apron around her waist.

Guilt welled thick and cold in Naruto's stomach. He could understand the glances of hate, of fear mixed with awe-

The jinchuuriki's arrival signaled the death of the old world, and the beginning of a new: a new world that many of Konoha's people would not live to see.

And how _galling _it must be, to know that the jinchuuriki were only here because the Konoha shinobi couldn't protect themselves, couldn't hope to even put up a fight without the help of outsiders.

To know that their shinobi, the pride and joy of the Land of Fire, the strongest country on the continent, were too weak to save themselves.

As he stared at the chipped counter beneath his hands, he muttered, "So do I."

* * *

He could hear the guns as he closed the door to the apartment, calling, "I'm home!"

Only silence greeted him as he tiptoed into the living room. Shinobu was sprawled across the couch, mouth open; he could hear Riko and Gaara arguing over some bit of religious philosophy in Gaara's room- probably waiting up for whoever was going to come take Riko on her tour.

He passed down the hallway, popped his head in to check on Moriko. She was curled like a sleeping puppy underneath her flower-print sheets, the horse that Varg had given her clutched in her hand, the soft yellow night of the nightlight casting golden flecks in her hair.

Varg was in the next room, sleeping on his belly- it still hurt too much to sleep on his back, to have the pressure against his long-healed whip scars- his legs tangled in the sheet and his head halfway inside his ratty T-shirt.

Yugito opened one eye as he stuck his head in, hand already reaching for a kunai hidden in a sheath inside her shirt. When she saw it was him, she nodded, familiar with his old ritual of 

checking on his family each night, making sure no nightmares disturbed them, before her eyelid drooped once more and she slipped back into dreams.

Katashi was a restless sleeper, mumbling something as he thrashed against the cruel grip of his sheets. Naruto sighed, went over and untangled his limbs, pulling the sheets back up to Katashi's chin. The younger jinchuuriki stilled, curled into himself, like the spiral in a seashell.

He knocked at Noboru's door, knowing the oldest of the jinchuuriki to have no qualms about flooding the room with poison gas when he was surprised.

There was a long pause before the scratchy,

"Come in."

Noboru's voice sounded… strange, exhausted, thick. The door creaked as Naruto stepped inside, the moonlight shining white on the books scattered around the room.

Noboru was ensconced in the overstuffed chair that served as his bed- it was too difficult for him to lie down now; hell, just getting up was enough of a chore- a book open across his knees, his eyes gleaming yellow from the black mark across his face.

The air in the room was heavy with the salty smell of tears.

"You okay?" Naruto whispered, catching sight of the solitary tears glinting behind the spectacles.

Noboru's fingers- swollen knuckles, papery skin, old scars- spidered out over the page as he glanced down, silent. Naruto took a seat in the other chair, leaning forward, flinching as Noboru jumped at the roll of distant explosions.

"I was reading," Noboru said, and his voice was choked, "about my war."

Naruto said nothing, waiting.

"About the battle of Knife Ridge, where I walked up behind a boy no older than myself and put a kunai through his spine. About how we found Hide, the son of my commander, in a prison camp, where they'd put out his eyes and cut off his legs. About the boys that I played ninja with-"

Tears plopped onto the paper, "-and the way they screamed when the explosion hit and blew them to red shreds of flesh.

"And I sit here, and I see the Academy from my window, and I watch those little children, just like them, throw kunai into targets. I watch them practice the jutsu to protect themselves from poison. I watch them spar for hour after hour, and I know…

It's not going to be enough to save any of them. So many are going to die. So many mothers are going to lose their children, so many husbands their wives, so many sons their fathers. So much will be lost, and so I wonder…"

Noboru's thumb absently caressed the picture on the page, a black-and-white photograph of two shinobi after battle, curled against each other, comfort in the midst of desolation.

"And I wonder…" Noboru smiled through his tears, and Naruto felt his heart break, "what did we die for? What good did I do by killing six hundred people? Why did Hide have to spend the rest of his life a lump in a bed, without eyes or ears or legs? Why did I have to watch one of the little genin cut his own throat because he couldn't bear it anymore? What use was all that death, all that pain, all those-"

His breath rattled within him, "-_wasted years_? _What use_ was any of it, when we didn't even stop this war?

"We were fighting for…" another sob, and it was all Naruto could do not to cry, "a safer world. A _better _world. A world without war."

The guns rumbled like the voices of the thousand dead entombed in earth. Noboru's mustached mouth crumpled, the book falling from his lap as he buried his face in one hand, the other curling in the cloth of his pants.

"And we failed."

His voice was as hopeless as a death knell.

"_I _failed."

Naruto pitched forward, grabbed that thin hand, cold and bony like the hand of death, and clung desperately, trying to impart warmth, hope, life, their joined hands limned silver in the moonlight as Noboru's frail shoulders shook with dry sobs, and each sob tore Naruto's heart out.

* * *

**Annotations**

"_The hot leap of purple spurting from his thigh." _- A line from one of Wilfred Owen's lesser-known poems, 'Disabled.'

"_Their catastrophe was the catastrophe of all mankind._" - A line from Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.

* * *

**A/N: **All comments and criticisms are loved and cherished. If you have questions, please post them in the forum linked in my profile.


	26. Chapter 26

_Give me time I will be clear__  
Given time you'll understand__  
What possesses me to right what you have suffered  
I'm in this mood because of scorn  
I'm in a mood for total war._

- 'Darkangel' by VNV Nation

* * *

Jiraiya knocked on the jinchuuriki's door, drumming the fingers of his other hand on his hip as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet.

He didn't want to see him.

Didn't want to see the son of his best student, the son of Konoha's greatest hero, who had betrayed everything his father died for.

But Tsunade had ordered him; if Akatsuki was behind the war, they were probably going to try and get the jinchuuriki at some point, so she'd sent him over with a file full of scant information and blurred photos.

The doorknob turned, the door swinging open.

Jiraiya resisted the urge to whistle.

Yugito Nii stood framed in the doorway, glowering up at him, her eyes the pale blue of sky, her arms crossed over her flat chest.

"Hello, beautiful," he leered, wishing he had his notebook.

"You must be the one the Hokage sent," Yugito said, completely ignoring his greeting. That wasn't very polite of her-

But he lost his train of thought as Naruto leaned around the corner of the foyer.

He was skinny and tan and his blond hair stuck out in spikes everywhere, and his grin was goofy and stupid, and he looked so much like Minato that it made his heart hurt.

"Hey, you old pervert," Naruto said, coming around the corner and sticking his hands in his pockets, bouncing up and down on his toes.

Trust Naruto to start the first conversation they'd had in six long years with an insult.

"Hey, yourself," he said, stepping inside the apartment, Yugito closing the door behind him.

He didn't know what to say.

'_What would your father think?' 'You were the first student I'd taken in twenty years and you threw it all away?' 'What the hell kind of luck do you have to be living with a stone-cold fox like Nii?_'

Although really, all he wanted to say was 'why?'

"Do you…" Naruto was glancing up, down, anywhere but at him, "want a drink? We have soda."

"Soda's for pansies," Jiraiya scoffed. Soda? _Really?_ "Sake would be nice, if you've got it."

Yugito brushed by him, disappearing into the kitchen. He heard her rummaging around as he and Naruto stood in the foyer and stared at each other.

"You look good," he finally said. "Filled out a little, I see."

"Yeah, well, chasing Moriko around and sparring with Katashi and Yugito will do that to you." The side of Naruto's mouth lifted in a spare grin as he picked at a loose thread in the hem of his blue T-shirt.

"You got to _spar_ with her?" Honestly, some people had all the luck. "Lucky bastard."

"Oh, it's really not that fun-" Naruto started, cut off as Yugito came back and handed Jiraiya a cup of sake.

"Fun for me," Yugito said, flashing a quicksilver grin in Naruto's direction. "Not so much for you, since you hate tying so much."

"I don't hate it," Naruto sulked.

Yugito rolled her eyes. "Of course. The others are all holed up in their rooms for the moment, so if you and this old man over here have any heartwarming confessions to make to each other, I'd suggest you do it now, before they all come out and demand food."

She swung around and stalked across the living room, disappearing into a bedroom. Jiraiya craned his head, trying to catch a glimpse, but was denied. The world hated him.

"Want to sit down?" Naruto didn't even wait for him to answer, bolting into the kitchen and making all sorts of racket before he emerged with a can of soda, flopping into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, shoving aside piles of origami paper, charcoal, wood shavings, and puzzle pieces to make room for his drink.

Well, at least Jiraiya wasn't the only nervous one.

He sat down, slouched forward, resting his elbows on the tabletop. "I hear you're leaving tomorrow."

Naruto stared at him over the rim of the can, lowered it. "Yeah; Katashi and I are getting sent out with Team Eight to go knock out some of Kiri's transport fleet. I kind of wish I wasn't leaving so soon; I mean, I haven't gotten to see Konohamaru, or my old apartment, and I'm supposed to have a talk with Sasuke, so he's going to throw a bitchfit when he finds out I'm already gone."

And the little ass sounded just the same; his voice deeper, maybe, but just like the boy Jiraiya had taught.

Jiraiya stared down at his cup of sake, finally blurted,

"I didn't miss you, you know."

But after he said it, he didn't feel any better; just vindictive and old.

Naruto flinched, his face crumpling in on itself like a wadded up tissue. Guilt welled cold as ice in Jiraiya's stomach. "Okay." Naruto rocked the can back and forth between his hands, the light reflecting off his face like silver sunlight. "I, uh, did. Miss you, I mean."

Jiraiya raised his cup to his lips, took a drink, if only to blunt the fury mixed with grief sloshing around inside him like a boiling ocean. How manipulative, to say that he _missed_ him when he left Konoha behind and killed three Hunter-nin and had Nii almost maim Gai and Lee for life?

"If you _missed_ me so much, then why'd you leave?" he bit out.

Naruto glanced up, his blue eyes pinning Jiraiya in place. "You want to know?"

"_Everyone_ wants to know!" Jiraiya slammed his cup down on the table, sending a carving flying. "The Council nearly shit themselves because you wouldn't tell them!"

"They don't deserve to know." The light caught Naruto's eyes, glinting like blue steel. "They don't even deserve our help."

'_If only you could see him now, Minato._'

"Whatever; are you going to tell me why you left or not?"

Naruto let go of his soda and raked his hands through his hair, messing it up even further. "It's a pretty crazy story."

"I'm sure I've heard worse." Orochimaru had always been a wonderful storyteller, spinning tales of ancient battles and powerful shinobi. Jiraiya had always wondered, in the years following the betrayal, how he hadn't noticed that none of those stories included love, or laughter, or joy.

"Well, kitsunes, like the Kyuubi, can have nine tails. With each tail they get, their power grows; when they get their ninth tail, they become immortal, and…" Naruto's voice was somehow haunted, "they see the future."

Okay, great. Jiraiya had totally come here for a mythological lecture.

"And after I beat Gaara in the Chuunin Exam, the Kyuubi gave me a choice. I could stay in Konoha, condemn the jinchuuriki to death, and condemn Konoha to complete destruction by Sound and Akatsuki in war. Or I could leave, gather the jinchuuriki, and escape Akatsuki. This would keep Konoha alive, since Akatsuki wouldn't attack it, looking for me."

"The _Kyuubi_ told you this?" Jiraiya repeated, his words dripping sarcasm. "And you trusted it?"

"Yeah," Naruto said, taking another sip of soda. "See, kitsunes lie. They cheat you, and sometimes they play horrible tricks on you, and they're just not nice. But there's one thing a kitsune will never lie about: when it comes to preserving their own life, they'll always tell the truth. And anyway, Kyuubi showed me the future that would happen if I stayed; kitsunes can't manipulate the future, or change the images to control peoples' choices."

"It's the _Kyuubi_," Jiraiya repeated, staying seated, even though all he wanted to do was lunge across the table and shake Naruto, to scream '_You left because of _it_?_'

"I know," Naruto said. "I know that it's an evil, cruel beast that wants nothing more than to set the entire world on fire. But I mean…" he shrugged helplessly, "it's done. I can't go back and change the past six years, any more than I can keep Riko alive."

"Bull-" but then Jiraiya paused.

Something dark and hot and terrible was forming in his brain, something so horrific that he could barely think about it-

"Jiraiya?"

His voice, when he finally spoke, was but a whisper. "You left to save the jinchuuriki. You kept them away from Akatsuki. And now Akatsuki's engineered this war, because they…"

'_Oh, Minato, my boy. Look what he's done._'

"They _knew _you'd come back to Konoha. And they knew the jinchuuriki would follow.

"This war's because of _you._"

And suddenly everything made a sick kind of sense again; suddenly the world was back on track, throwing itself heedlessly into the fire. Naruto had made his choice, and had catapulted the Five Villages into war.

'_And the Kyuubi never told you, did it, that this would happen? That the world would burn?_'

And for a long, silent moment, Jiraiya's body ached with pity for the small boy he had known.

Naruto's face was as pale as milk, before he bowed his head. And the fury twisting in Jiraiya's bones snapped at him, coalesced into words, acidic and cutting, spewing from his mouth because he couldn't control it, couldn't control the fear and the rage and-

"So tell me," he spat, "is this future _better_? Is it better that we're going up against the other Great Villages and their vassals, when in your future it was just Orochimaru and Akatsuki? Is it better that all this is happening because you trusted the word of a kitsune?"

Naruto's shoulders hunched. The empty can stilled between his hands.

"If I hadn't gone," he said, and his voice was as old as the hills, "Riko would be catatonic, at best, long dead from seizures at worst. Moriko would be a complete imbecile, locked away to rot in a filthy shed with no human contact at all. Yugito would be even more sociopathic than she already is. Varg would be ashes, burned at the stake. Katashi would have died long ago in battle because he wouldn't have anything to live for. Noboru would be dead of old age or so lonely that he might as well be dead. Shinobu would be locked up in a medical library, forgotten, except when they need her to save somebody who would spit on her if they knew she was there. Gaara would probably be insane."

The side of his mouth twisted again in that slight, tired smile as the sound of metal crumpling filled the air, the sides of the can bending beneath his palms.

Jiraiya was beginning to hate that smile.

"I don't know if this is better. I don't know if I made the right choice. But-" his voice shuddered, "you don't need to berate me for it. I fucking _know_, okay? I _know_ that this war started because of my choice, because I kept the jinchuuriki away from Akatsuki. I _know_ that thousands of Konoha shinobi are going to die because of my choice, because I thought I was doing good, that I was saving them.

But I have to trust that I made the right choice. I have to believe that I did it for the right reasons. " He dashed away tears with an angry sweep of his arm across his eyes. "And when I hear Moriko speak, or watch Katashi pour soap on Varg's whittling knives, or see Riko smile, then…

"Then I think that it's all worth it."

Jiraiya closed his eyes, breathed in, and out.

'_All the cruelest things come from love._'

"I-" he started, and stopped. "I can't deal with this."

He heard Naruto laugh, a tiny, cracked sound, sick and sad and tired. "Yeah."

Jiraiya licked his lips, tasting the last of the sake, and opened his eyes. Naruto sat across the table, his eyes bruised with grief, his skinny shoulders burdened with the enormity of what he had done.

"I have information on Akatsuki; you guys should probably know, since they're after you."

"Yeah," Naruto said, his fingers uncurling from around the can. "Okay." He levered himself out of the chair, shuffled into the living room and down the hallway, knocking on doors. Jiraiya followed, stopping in the living room.

Small glass sculptures were on the mantel, interspersed with wood carvings. Plants were scattered in all the corners, their vines trailing over books piled on the floor.

The jinchuuriki filtered into the room: Katashi, a gaunt boy with bloody lips; a small girl with a seal around her eye; Varg, who towered over everyone else in the room, his eyes glinting red when the light caught them.

Shinobu was still dressed in worn flannel shirt and trousers, her eyes bleary as she yawned, slouching over to the couch and falling onto it, ignoring Jiraiya completely. Varg joined her, Moriko sitting on the floor by his feet. Yugito helped Noboru to a chair and then took up her position by the door, arms crossed. Riko and Gaara sat on the floor, leaning against the couch. Katashi perched on the back of the couch, his arms hanging down like an ape's.

"Everybody," Naruto said, "this is Jiraiya. He's here to talk to us about Akatsuki…"

Jiraiya tuned him out, busied himself getting out his pipe and tobacco, and flicked open his lighter, the small flame flickering orange.

There was a low, keening sound, and he looked up.

Varg's eyes were fixed on the flame, his shoulders hunched, a noise like a dying beast wrenching itself free of his throat. In all his life, Jiraiya had never seen such fear as the terror he saw in Varg's eyes.

In one smooth movement, Naruto vaulted over the back of the couch and crouched in front of Varg, cupping Varg's rough-hewn face in his hands and resting his forehead against Varg's, his thumbs resting on Varg's cheekbones. The other jinchuuriki gathered around, Moriko climbing into Varg's lap- his hands were shaking too badly to hold her.

"Turn it off," Gaara bit out, sand hissing a warning. Jiraiya flicked the lighter shut, stared as Naruto whispered,

"Hey, Varg. Look at me, buddy, okay?"

Varg shuddered, the stench of ozone filling the air.

"_Mamma_," Varg groaned, his eyes two pools of black, the sound brimful of grief. "_Pappa_."

What the hell?

Naruto closed his eyes, bit his lower lip as he kept whispering, "It's okay, Varg. It's okay. Look at me."

Moriko was silent, her gaze trained on Varg's twisted face, her tiny hands gripping his trembling fingers. Shinobu reached in, kneaded Varg's shoulders.

"Maybe I should go," Jiraiya said.

"No," Noboru said from where he sat, gazing at the scene with terrible resignation in his eyes, "this, too, shall pass."

A long minute passed, the air filled with Naruto's whispers, Varg's moans of terror and grief, until Varg blinked, turned his gaze to stare into Naruto's eyes. Naruto's lips twitched into a heart-rending smile as he whispered,

"Hey, buddy. You back?"

Varg nodded, his eyes flickering in Jiraiya's direction.

"You frightened us," Riko informed him, before Moriko squealed,

"Varg!" and threw her arms about his neck, Varg's arms coming up automatically to keep her from falling.

Naruto drew away, patted him on the shoulder. "Don't scare us like that again, okay?" Gaara and Yugito nodded agreement.

Varg's brow furrowed, before he said, "Will… try."

"Good," Gaara said, before the jinchuuriki separated again, taking up their positions. Naruto leaned against the wall near Jiraiya, met his eyes, nodded.

Just like the brat to dictate when Jiraiya could start speaking.

"Naruto's told you all about the Akatsuki?" Jiraiya chewed on the stem of his pipe; of course he wouldn't be able to smoke here, because this whole situation just wasn't bad enough. The jinchuuriki nodded, Varg nodding along before he got distracted by a spot of light on the floor in front of him and began flapping his hand in and out of the sunbeam to see the light flash.

Naruto watched him with pained eyes, before he turned back to Jiraiya. "Yeah."

Gaara leaned forward, resting skinny elbows on skinny knees. "They're involved in this, aren't they?"

'_Smart kid._'

"They're the ones behind all of this-" he stopped, shook his head, chewed on the stem of his pipe, and started over. "Scratch that. They started it, but they just played off existing political situations and fears."

"They're behind the entire war?" Katashi repeated, wide-eyed, from his perch on the back of the couch like some overgrown bird.

"I just said that!"

Katashi flinched, and guilt welled up cold and thick in Jiraiya's throat. He stuffed down the urge to apologize.

"And before you get the urge to start asking why we haven't told this to the other Kages: we've tried, but they've been completely unreceptive, even when confronted with evidence."

That, and to be a Kage, you had to be a bloody stubborn bastard who never admitted when you were wrong.

That was why Tsunade was such a good one.

"Anyway, we think we know why they're so… stupid, for lack of a better word." He fished out one of his dearly-bought photographs, flicking it onto the coffee table. A pale, round-faced lady glowered out from the photograph, her headband- from the Land of the Moon- slung around her thick neck.

"That lovely specimen of feminine beauty is Sayuri Komatsu, an S-class missing-nin from the Land of the Moon, and the Akatsuki's newest member."

The jinchuuriki crowded around the photo, jostling for a better view and getting their dirty fingerprints all over it.

"She's probably the greatest genjutsu specialist the shinobi world has ever seen," he continued. Yugito glanced up, jaw clenching. "And we think that she's somehow managed to trap the Kages in a genjutsu- a very insidious one, there are only a few instances of ones like it in recorded history- that simply blinds them to anything that could prevent them from continuing the war. However, it doesn't destroy their personality or make them act drastically different, so no one even suspects it. Luckily, holding this genjutsu on four Kages is draining her, so that's why she hasn't managed to use genjutsu against us. She's basically a nonentity, as far as offensiveness goes."

"So if we kill her, we end the war?" Naruto said.

Jiraiya tapped the tobacco in his pipe back into the bag. "No; if we kill her and break the genjutsu, we don't know what will happen. They could pull out, or they could decide that since they've already started a war, they might as well finish it."

"You shouldn't put your faith in human nature," Gaara said, glancing up at Jiraiya, his pale eyes frightening.

The jinchuuriki, more than anyone else, knew the futility of faith.

"So… anyway, the Akatsuki are after you all. The entire purpose of this war was probably to get you here, so that they can kidnap you, and torture you, and you'll die, and it will all be terribly tragic and inconvenient."

Shinobu stared. Then the rest of the jinchuuriki looked up from the photo and stared, too.

Jiraiya was abruptly reminded that these were people who could produce poison in his veins, drown him while he wasn't even in the water, crush him in sand, and calculate fifty different ways to kill him in ten seconds.

"Um."

"So," Naruto said brightly, and Jiraiya had never been more thankful to the little runt in his life, "if they want us so badly, why don't they just come into Konoha and take us?"

"They're busy," Jiraiya said. "The leader and his second are in Ame, coordinating Amegakure's war efforts and the Akatsuki itself; Sayuri and this member called Zetsu are also in Ame, since Zetsu's guarding her while she works; the other teams are scattered around. Also, they know they can't take all of you while you're together, so they're going to wait until you all get sent out into battle, swoop in, and get you then.

"Just be careful. Don't engage them in direct combat; escape. There should be more than enough chaos on the battlefields for you to get away in."

"And if they follow us, what then?" Yugito said, folding her arms across her almost completely flat chest.

Jiraiya shrugged. "They need you alive in order to get the bijuu, I think."

"That doesn't make any sense, because the other jinchuuriki died, and their bijuu survived." Naruto scratched at the wispy blond stubble on his chin, the sunlight slanting through the room turning his hair to gold, and for a moment Jiraiya saw Minato, the best and the brightest of all his students.

"Yugito?" Noboru asked, his hands flexing on the head of his cane. "If you would?"

"I would much rather not," Yugito bit out, spitting blood into the same spittoon Katashi used, but she closed her eyes nonetheless, breathing slowing, something black and serpentine crawling out from underneath the black necklace of a seal.

The Nekomata's chakra- he sensed it as a void, an emptiness screaming to be filled with life- permeated the room as Yugito opened her eyes, and it was all he could do not to curse as she turned those black, black eyes to him.

"The bijuu can die with us," she said, her voice ringing hollow. Her face twisted in revulsion. "They tricked the others in the Village of Shadows, told them that they could save them, if the jinchuuriki would only let them free. A trap; the second they let the demons free, they died, because the demon's chakra had become so intermingled with theirs that they couldn't survive without it."

"So if we don't let ourselves be tricked, then they die with us, right?"

Yugito shook her head. "In theory. When Jirou was mortally injured, the Nekomata battled him to free itself." She shrugged, and Jiraiya's shoulders sagged with relief as she turned those eerie black eyes away from him. "From what I gleaned of the jinchuuriki's last memories, the bijuu will first try to trick us. If we refuse, then the bijuu will try to battle us in order to free themselves." She tilted her head as she stared at Riko for a long moment, then continued, "That's what happened to Jirou. Although he wasn't tricked, the Nekomata had enough chakra to pull free of the seal, which hastened his death."

"Well, none of us are going to be tricked," Noboru said from where he sat ensconced in the armchair, smiling in thanks at Shinobu as she topped off his cup of tea. "Is this battle you spoke of a matter of willpower?"

Yugito was still, lips moving for a moment- conversing with the spirits of the dead?- before she answered, "Willpower and chakra. If we use up our respective bijuu's chakra before being mortally injured, then the issue is moot. They won't be able to tear themselves free."

"Okay," Naruto said, glancing at the photo. "Do you have pictures of the other members?"

"Yeah." He extricated them from his pockets, flicked them onto the coffee table. Katashi grabbed one, the jinchuuriki passing them around among themselves.

"I don't have pictures of the leader or his subordinate. I know their names, though: Pain's the leader, while Konan is his second-in-command. The nice thing about the Akatsuki is that they all wear black cloaks with red clouds on them, so they're easily identifiable. The picture Katashi's holding is Kisame Hoshigaki; his partner's Itachi Uchiha."

"Uchiha? Like Sasuke?" Shinobu sat up.

"Yeah. He's S-class, like all the Akatsuki, and armed with the Sharingan. He was one of the greatest shinobi Konoha ever produced, and his skill hasn't deteriorated. He's notorious for his use of fire jutsus in particular, as well as the Sharingan.

"As for Kisame over there, information's scarce. He's from Kiri, one of the Seven Swordsmen, and uses water jutsu." Naruto leaned over the back of the couch, his eyes widening as Katashi mumbled something, his words slurred.

"Rei had a picture of him?"

Katashi nodded, staring down at the photograph, his face blank. Jiraiya had noticed the resemblance between the two of them; they shared the same teeth, gills, and webbed fingers, although Katashi's skin wasn't blue.

Something to think about, then.

"The black-and-white guy in Yugito's hand is Zetsu; he's from Kusa." Jiraiya stared at the ceiling, trying to remember what he'd heard about this one. Information was scarce on all the Akatsuki, but Zetsu was practically a nonentity. "As far as I know, no one's ever fought him and survived, so I don't have anything to say about him. But he looks like he'd burn pretty good, if you managed to set him alight."

"Jashin," Yugito mumbled, staring down at the glossy photo in her hand.

"What?" Noboru said, leaning forward.

"This man's a devotee of Jashin, the god of destruction," Yugito explained, tapping her finger on the picture of Hidan. "The beads wrapped around his wrist are a symbol of affiliation."

"Are you one, too?" Naruto said, pointing at the red beads coiled around Yugito's arm, over white bandages.

"Huh?" Yugito blinked, glanced down at her beads, her face softening for a moment. She was beautiful, then, despite the thinness of her hands, the raised scars he could see seaming her fingers. "These? My… mother gave them to me." She caught herself, jaw firming, and went on, "There was a thriving Jashin cult in Kumo; they tried to get me to join them, since the Nekomata is so… exceptionally skilled," her smile was bitter as wormwood, "at causing destruction."

"Got it in one," Jiraiya said. "That's Hidan; no one knows where he's from, as the symbol on his hitai-ate doesn't match any known shinobi country that we know of, past or present. Of course, it could have been a country that disappeared hundreds of years ago, since Hidan is, for all intents and purposes, immortal. There have been reports of him being separated into twenty pieces and still surviving it."

Yugito snorted. "Immortality? Immortality is only a word. All that exists can die. Every living thing has a weapon against which it has no defense."

"Good luck finding his," Jiraiya said, wishing he hadn't said it immediately as Yugito turned her flat gaze to him.

"Anyway." He coughed. "The man in Noboru's picture is Kazuku; all I know about him is that he's obsessed with money, has mastered almost every element, and uses those black threads that are holding him together as offensive weapons. He and Hidan are partners."

"Those two, Sasori and Deidara, I know more about. Sasori's from Suna, and the person you're seeing in the picture? That's actually a puppet. No one knows where the real Sasori is: for all we know, he's sitting in some cave somewhere, pulling the strings. He uses puppets in combat, except these puppets aren't wooden: they're made from the hollowed-out bodies of his opponents."

"I've heard of him," Gaara said, passing the picture to Naruto, who looked revolted at Jiraiya's words. "He was the greatest puppetmaster the Academy ever produced, but he murdered his parents and then disappeared, taking their bodies with him. His grandmother, Chiyo, still lives in Suna."

"I feel sorry for her, then," Noboru said. "And this… man? Woman?"

"That's a man, name of Deidara."

"Deidara?" Riko lifted her head, turning in Jiraiya's direction. "From Iwa?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"He is famous there," Riko said. "He remains the only person to have broken out of the maximum security Iwa prison beneath the catacombs. He killed the…" she trailed off, the jinchuuriki all turning to her, their eyes full of grief, even as she shook herself, came back, finished, "-Kage at the time," she added, grinning with something akin to glee. "Utilizes explosive clay, correct?"

"Yes."

"He was the scion of the oldest Clan in Iwa," Riko said. "He had an intellectual disagreement, I believe, with the head of his Clan over the nature of art, and then murdered her. For that he was imprisoned."

"That obviously worked out well," Naruto said, leaning over to touch Riko's shoulder in silent commiseration. Jiraiya watched as Riko turned her face up to Naruto, smiling, and the smile broke his heart.

He had seen the way the jinchuuriki looked at each other, at the way they moved around each other.

They needed each other- the family that had brought them out of despair into life, out of suffering into joy- to stay sane, to- _God, _just to stay _alive_.

People shouldn't need each other that fucking much.

And some were going to die- he knew that as he knew the beating of his heart, the subtle curves of a woman's mouth- and if he lived he would watch the others as they self-destructed.

"Thanks for warning us," Noboru said, nodding at him. "We appreciate you taking the time to do so."

"Don't thank me," Jiraiya waved away the appreciation, "I owed that knucklehead over there a favor."

Only for Minato's son would he have done this. Naruto grinned, the smile a strange mixture of Kushina and Minato, and for a moment he felt the grief like a physical blow. Moriko was turning the photograph over and over in her hands where she sat on Varg's lap, singing some song under her breath- a song from Kumo?

He glanced at Yugito, pale and harsh as winter, and bit back a smile at the idea of Yugito teaching Moriko a song.

"I'm going to go," he said, grabbing his photo back from Moriko's dirt-smeared fingers and gathering the others. "I've got a meeting with the slave driver at the Hokage Tower. You know, if it weren't for her bre-"

"Jiraiya!" Naruto shrieked, clapping his hands over Moriko's ears. Moriko squirmed, glared up at him, the plants scattered around the room stirring, vines slithering toward Naruto's ankles. Truly, a vicious and deadly attack.

"What? I'm sure she's heard worse, hanging around you lot."

"No, she hasn't," Shinobu said primly.

"I'll show you out," Naruto said, bouncing off the couch and escorting Jiraiya to the front hallway, past mounds of kunai and senbon. Jiraiya could hear the jinchuuriki start squabbling, and the words he wanted to speak were trapped behind his teeth, a bitter contagion spreading across his tongue.

He had to say them, had to make sure that Naruto understood the burden he had accepted by coming here, by making the jinchuuriki love him so fiercely that they would follow him into the mouth of Hell.

"You know they all came here because of you, right?" He regretted saying the words as soon as they left his lips, and bit down on the stem of his pipe, as if to plug his foolish mouth.

Naruto glanced at him from where he was leaning against the doorframe, picking at a hole in the hem of his shirt.

"Yeah." His voice was lifeless, beaten. "I know they did."

Jiraiya's skin crawled at his words, at the incredible courage Naruto possessed, to make a choice that could condemn those he loved most to destruction, all because of their love for him.

And Jiraiya was only glad that he would never have to make such a decision… that he could content himself with being a follower.

* * *

"A _kid's_ movie?" Katashi said, holding the DVD case between thumb and forefinger like it was going to contaminate him.

"Yeah. We need something that Moriko can watch, and we are all going to watch this movie, so sit down, shut up, and eat some popcorn," Naruto said, shoving the bowl in his direction and stealing the DVD case.

The movie wasn't interesting at all, but Moriko was loving it, so Gaara figured that it was a worthy sacrifice. Yugito kept muttering cynical remarks, one particularly snide one making Shinobu groan.

But… tomorrow Naruto and Katashi would leave, so this night was important:

A last hour of peace, a last time as a family.

The movie ended, Gaara glancing over at where Riko was dozing on his shoulder, her mouth half-open, drool puddling on his shoulder.

Disgusting- but he savored the feeling anyway, etched it into his heart, for soon he might never again feel her sleep on his shoulder, or drool on his shirt, or… He cut the thought off, jostled her to wake her up at Naruto's request, the other jinchuuriki bouncing in his seat excitedly. Katashi poked Moriko in the nose, laughing at how her eyes crossed.

Naruto created a shadow clone, the others ignoring it; Naruto created clones all the time, for cleaning or cooking or playing pranks.

"Hey, Riko, is your blindfold on?" Naruto's voice was a study in casualness.

"Yessss…" Riko said, twisting to face Naruto, suspicious. "Why do you-"

"Nothing," Naruto said, a smile tugging at his lips. The shadow clone came back in, and in his hands was…

A camera?

"Oh, _no_," Yugito breathed, before chaos broke out. Katashi launched himself at Naruto with a shout of "no pictures, asshole!" while Shinobu gasped at Katashi's language and grabbed Moriko, even as Moriko screeched in surprise. Yugito buried her head in her hands, Riko patting her shoulder. Varg leaned over the back of the couch to watch Naruto and Katashi wrestle, his face a picture of innocent interest. Noboru laughed so hard he dropped his teacup on the floor, where it shattered.

"Shit," Noboru muttered. There was a collective gasp.

There wasn't any point in trying to escape the camera, so Gaara simply folded his arms and glowered as the shadow clone shouted, "Surprise!" and the camera flashed, whirred as it spat out the picture through the slot in the bottom.

"I hope you're really happy," Yugito muttered, peering at Naruto through her fingers. "Now we're all immortalized in photographic form as complete idiots."

"I- that's my _eye_- think it's cute," Naruto panted as he and Katashi rolled across the floor, the jinchuuriki lifting their legs out of the way.

"It's time for Moriko to go to bed," Shinobu announced, hoisting her over her shoulder as Moriko kicked and squealed, her face plastered with a grin.

"Nooo," she giggled, reaching out for Varg. "Varg!"

Varg shook his head, waggled his fingers at her in a goodnight wave as Shinobu marched down the hallway.

Naruto pinned Katashi, crowed in triumph. Shinobu returned, bearing a DVD that she grabbed from the pile on the kitchen table, and shoved it into the DVD player before plopping down on the couch, the jinchuuriki all finding comfortable positions.

Katashi, of course, took the spot closest to the popcorn bowl, while Yugito cleaned up Noboru's broken teacup, casting droll glances at the television screen.

The movie was asinine, revolving around some sort of undead shinobi picking off unlucky genin in an abandoned building. Naruto pocked the screen with popcorn, he and Shinobu howling with laughter over some idiot pun that Shinobu made.

But in the blue-white light of the televisions screen, hours before two of their number were going to leave and maybe not come back, it was okay.

They were happy, even if their joy was brittle, thrumming with the knowledge that soon this would end.

The movie ended on the words 'the end?'. To Gaara's mind, the prospect of a sequel was more terrifying than anything that had happened in the actual movie.

"Bedtime," Naruto yawned, hauling Katashi up with him. "You packed yet?"

"Yes, mom," Katashi rolled his eyes, padding into his bedroom, the door shutting behind him. Shinobu helped Noboru down the hallway, the other jinchuuriki retiring to their respective rooms.

Gaara padded down the hallway to his room, something shimmered white in the corner of his eye- the picture, lying forgotten on a side table. He picked it up, glanced at it, smiled despite himself at the chaotic scene.

They looked… happy, like the pictures in the books he'd read as a child.

He needed a pen- couldn't find one that didn't have Katashi's teeth marks on them, so he picked up a tissue and forced himself to wrap it around one of those benighted writing utensils.

He flipped the picture over, and by the light of the moon, scribbled on the back in neat, tiny kanji,

'_Us before the war._'

* * *

Naruto rolled over in bed as the alarm clock beeped, slapping the button. '3:00' blinked pale yellow in the darkness of his room, glinting on the tanto resting on top of his folded uniform, the shuriken, still in their packets, waiting to be stuffed into his pockets.

He blinked, torpid, like a lizard, struggled out of his sheets, padded over to his clothes and his pack, a black lump slumping by the door. The floor was freakishly cold, and his toes curled as he stripped, yanked on black slacks and black shirt and black boots and gloves, grabbing the pack, heavy with supplies, and leaving the room, the bed unmade.

It seemed too… final, somehow, to make it.

He stumbled down the hallway towards the light in the kitchen, dragging his pack, wincing as it bumped against Gaara's door.

The kitchen was dimly lit, but-

"Hey," he said, blinking as he saw Yugito, Gaara, and Katashi in the kitchen, Gaara sketching something in charcoal, his fingers stained black. Yugito turned from the stove and shoved a platter of eggs and toast in his direction. Just how he liked it, dripping with butter.

"Thanks."

"It's nothing."

He plopped down beside Katashi, jabbed him in the side with his elbow to hear him curse, and dove into his breakfast.

It was a competition, like it always was with Katashi, to see who could finish breakfast first. The sounds of ferocious chewing filled the silence.

This morning was almost normal.

It was almost normal to have Yugito standing by the stove with a cup of coffee, in gray sweatpants that were too big and covered her feet and an oversized, dingy T-shirt. It was almost normal to have Gaara sitting across from him, in faded boxer shorts and a ratty shirt stained with charcoal, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he smudged a part of the drawing with his thumb.

Except he and Katashi were in black, their packs by the door, and in ten minutes they were leaving, and they might not come back.

"Naruto," Gaara said without looking up, "don't let Katashi get killed out there. He'll probably go charging into battle without looking and get killed by tripping, or something equally stupid."

"Love you too," Katashi muttered around his mouthful of bacon.

"Don't let Noboru kill Iruka," Naruto returned, draining the last of his coffee. "And don't ever let Iruka tell you guys the story of the spoon incident."

"The spoon incident?" Yugito stared at him over the rim of her coffee cup.

"We do not speak about the spoon incident," Naruto intoned, watching as Katashi got up, pounced on Gaara to give him a hug- Gaara accepted it stoically- and bounced over to Yugito to peck her on the cheek before vaulting over the island and scooping up his pack, the front door closing behind him.

"He's excited," Naruto said.

Yugito's eyes were weary. "He is young." Naruto finished his meal, pushed his plate aside, stared down at his hands.

Something was stuck in his throat, something big and wet and spiky, and he couldn't swallow around it, couldn't breathe, and he had something in his eye, and-

"Everything will be fine," Gaara said. He looked up at him, saw his brother studying him with inscrutable eyes, before Gaara reached across the table, grabbed his hand. Yugito rested her hand on his shoulder, her smile, when he glanced up at her, tainted with fear, but no less genuine.

"I know."

He had to go, and so he stood, and hugged them both, and hitched his backpack onto his shoulders, and left.

The hairs on his arms prickled in the cool morning air as he joined Katashi outside the apartment building, his shoulders protesting the backpack weighted down with kunai, senbon, scrolls, and rations. No birds sang, the village silent as they moved like shadows underneath the stars, ghosting by darkened windows, empty squares, boarded-up shops.

"Nervous?"

Katashi laughed, the sound high, like shattering glass. "No way!"

"Says the guy who grabbed onto Shinobu every time something happened in that scary movie last night," Naruto said as they took a left, cats' eyes gleaming yellow as they watched the two intruders pass through the empty town.

There, a half-remembered shortcut, and Naruto angled off the street, dragging Katashi with him as they loped through a waist-high field of grass, the dew soaking through his pants, cold and clammy against his skin.

"For your information," Katashi said with great dignity, his sword thumping against his thigh with every step, "I didn't grab onto her. _She_ grabbed onto _me_."

"Keep telling yourself that."

They emerged onto the main thoroughfare, the eastern gate looming like a sleeping giant at the end of the street, silhouetted against the red glare on the horizon like banked coals.

Hinata, Shino, and Kiba were standing in a group by the watchmen, burdened with packs. Akamaru was laden down like a packmule, his white fur dyed temporarily black. They were all wearing the same clothes: black pants, black long-sleeved shirts, black masks hanging around their necks.

"We have to be at the shore in seven days," Kiba said, shifting his pack to his other shoulder. "Plan is to travel twenty miles per day; we'll be moving at night. I'll take point; Hinata will be behind me. Shino, Naruto, and Katashi will be behind Hinata and I."

"Diamond formation?"

"Yeah." Kiba sniffed the air, nose wrinkling. "Fucking stinks of gunpowder," he muttered. "Anyway, today's the most dangerous day; we've got to break through the eastern lines."

"It shouldn't be t-too difficult," Hinata said, pulling her sleeves down over her hands. "Most of the invasion forces are coming from the west."

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go!" Katashi bounced around them like a chipmunk on drugs, the watchmen staring. Naruto stuck his hands in his pockets-

He didn't want to go.

He wanted to turn around and go back to his warm bed and back to a world where death wasn't coiled around them all, a silent snake waiting to strike.

But he knew duty, as he knew nothing else, and wouldn't forsake it.

"All right, already!" Kiba snapped, signaling the watchmen. With a groan of hinges, the gates creaked open, the five-man team slipping through the gap. The road stretched out before them like a ribbon of light in the darkness-

But the road was not for them.

Akamaru ghosted by them, a silent black shadow.

Kiba took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he rubbed his hands together, pulling his mask up over his face. "Okay. Let's go."

They took to the trees, Akamaru running beneath them, the trees of Konoha- strong and straight and leafy- sheltering them from view as they sprang from branch to branch. The hairs on Naruto's arms stood on end, even the rhythmic motion of leaping unable to calm him.

They were going to war.

They were going to break through the lines or die trying, because they were soldiers, and that was what soldiers did.

The world was silent but for their breathing and the creaking of branches beneath their feet. Naruto stared ahead into darkness, searching for light, searching for a sign as Konoha receded behind him.

He had never thought to leave Konoha behind again.

The miles passed quickly, Katashi moving beside him like clockwork, the two of them in sync, brothers, Katashi mumbling seal combinations beneath his breath, so soft that only Naruto heard it.

The moon sank lower in the sky, the stars continuing their ceaseless rotation above them. Shino took a sip of water, ate a food pill. They stopped to relieve themselves, pressed on.

Seven miles from Konoha, Kiba skidded to a stop, raising a hand, the others joining him on the branch, his whispered words slurred as he did his best to drop the 'S' sounds; hisses carried too far in the silence.

"We're at the beginning of the lines; I smell something."

There was a small pulse of chakra (as loud as a shout when they 'd all kept their chakra dampened for so long) as Hinata's Byakugan activated, pale and round like twin moons. He remembered vaguely what the Byakugan did- something about seeing in three-hundred-sixty degrees of vision?

'Twelve shinobi,' Hinata signed, pointing ahead of them, her white finger like a beam of light in the darkness. 'From Kiri.'

A few of Shino's bugs fluttered to him out of the gloom. 'Four jounin, eight chuunin,' Shino signed back.

Katashi scoffed, practically vibrating with eagerness. "I could take them all on my own," he muttered.

When would he stop being so _arrogant_?

And Naruto knew that his arrogance was only a shield for the broken boy that still saw himself as worthless, knew that he couldn't be angry, but arrogance had no place in war, and he never wanted to see Katashi dead because of it.

Kiba's hand closed into a fist.

They broke through the foliage, plummeted to earth, shadows bearing death in their hands.

"Shit!" one of the enemies cried.

Naruto picked out three, created two clones, one clone creating a Raikyu, the other one planting its hands on the ground.

The earth yawned, roots creaking as they broke apart, one of the chuunin's ankle caught in the hole. Naruto attacked, covering his tanto with wind chakra and slashing-

The wind sharpened the edge, cut through bone and spinal cord like a shard of diamond, the man's eyes rolling white and pained in his head as his legs went out from under him and he toppled into the hole that was now his grave.

Hinata was grace incarnate, twisting out of the deadly attacks, her gentle taps doing more damage than the heaviest of blows- the economy with which she moved reminded him of Yugito- as she touched one jounin's forehead with her index finger. The woman's eyes bled crimson, twin red waterfalls spilling from her nose as her brain hemorrhaged.

Akamaru had a chuunin's throat in his jaws; he flicked his head side-to-side once, dropped the man to the earth where he gurgled and died, blood-flecked white foam spilling from his gaping mouth. Kiba sailed past Akamaru, a shadow of black, grunted as a stray senbon caught him in the side.

Naruto threw the tanto aside as the jounin closed, dodged a blow, grunted as the enemy's knee slammed into his stomach, air fleeing his lungs, vision going gray around the edges. He bent around it, grabbed at an ankle, his fingers sinking into water-

A clone. He bared his teeth- she needed to stop _fucking around_- jammed his fingers up through the clone's palate, hand emerging in a spray of droplets. The clone dissolved as he swung around, narrowly missing Katashi's blade as he ducked, rolled, sprang up, catching sight of the woman.

Her eyes were black with battle-lust, her mouth a wide slash of white. He threw himself at her, scooped up his tanto, sparing a moment- his clones were engaging the other chuunin- to wonder at the _idiocy_ of it all-

That two people who had no quarrel with each other should be fighting to the death in a mist-shrouded forest for no reason other than that their countries said they should.

Her hands flew through seals, and she inhaled air, spat a torrent of water. He tried to dodge, too late, the force of the water battering the air out of his chest, the world spinning as he closed his eyes against the flood, forced his hands together and switched-

His tanto was gone again- he launched himself off the branch he found himself on, calling more clones, Raikyus flickering white-blue in the darkness, the woman unsheathing her sword. Clone after clone disappeared as she called the water in the river nearby, spears of water arcing through the night.

Kiba's cheek was bruised- he could see his cheekbone, how it was shifted out of place- but that only added to the terrible fury on his face as he held a man still for Akamaru to tear his throat out. Shino stood still, his opponents reduced to rocking masses of black bugs.

Screams, explosions, curses disturbed the quiet of the forest. Katashi turned one of his opponent's water jutsus against him, multiplied the water inside the man's mouth, drowned him.

Naruto closed, forced his way through the crowd of clones, caught her about the waist and bore her down and back into the river, water splashing up around them, glittering like diamonds. The water soaked his clothes, freezing with glaciermelt.

She was warm in his arms-

And she spat a curse as he covered his hand with jagged shards of earth- a good technique, he learned it from Riko- jammed his hand through her stomach, brutal, inefficient. Blood boiled on his skin, dyed the water of the river red as her legs kicked, spasmed, and he watched the life leave her eyes.

Green-brown, like Moriko's.

He drew his hand out, his skin painted red-brown.

It had gotten easier, like Yugito had said.

It had gotten easier, and he hated himself for it.

He turned around, dropped her corpse, watched the others stare in mute horror at his brother. Katashi howled with laughter as his sword arced across an enemy's eyes, ocular fluid spilling in white rivers down bloody cheeks. The man screamed, raising shaking hands, and Katashi lopped those fingers off, too, in two quick slices.

This was Katashi, and at his heart he was still a small child screaming in the dark, exacting vengeance on a world that had taken everything from him.

Naruto couldn't muster the energy to be nauseous as the sword flicked up, down, side-to-side, and ropy coils of viscera plopped, streaming red, to the ground.

"Katashi," he said, and his voice echoed hollowly off the trees.

Katashi glanced at him, rolled his eyes, and beheaded the man. A small act of forced mercy.

The head rolled to Kiba's feet.

The earth of the clearing was churned into wet slop with water and blood, bodies littering the forest floor. Naruto sloshed out of the water, grabbed his tanto, took stock.

Nothing too bad: his chest was aching, and he'd have a nice set of bruises spanning his entire right side; Kiba's cheekbone was broken, and his side was punctured by a senbon, but that was easily fixed with some of the medical jutsu Shinobu taught him; Katashi prodded at a rapidly growing bump on his forehead, scowling. Shino was limping.

'_Oh, Shinobu's going to kill me for letting her boy get hurt._'

"We have time to bury them." Kiba slurred, wincing as the motion of speaking jostled his fracture.

"It'd be a good idea," Shino said, glancing down at the naked corpse by his feet, the skull grinning sightlessly up at him, stripped of flesh by his kikai. "We don't want to leave evidence." He glanced at Naruto.

Of _course_ they wanted him to do the clean-up; sometimes having an earth affinity sucked.

He knelt, touched the earth, chakra diffusing. The ground shook beneath them, vibrations traveling up his bones like some great beast's growl, a chasm yawning.

Naruto turned, grabbed the body floating in the river, bumping against the reeds, and hauled her up over the bank.

The soldiers of Konoha searched the bodies, pocketing what senbon and kunai they could carry. Naruto found the woman's wallet, flipped it open, trying to read the folded orders in the pocket. Nothing- the orders were encoded. He glanced at the pictures.

She had kids.

He swallowed, shut the wallet, put it back into her vest, to rest above her silent heart for eternity. A few shadow clones sprang into being and helped the others carry the bodies to the pit. He scooped her up in his arms- a sad distortion of a bride being carried over the threshold- and stumbled to the grave, letting her fall.

"Hey, look what I found!" Katashi thrust a packet of dried fish in his face. "I used to steal these in Kiri! It's been so long since I've had some- they're really good, kind of salty. Thanks," he said to the headless man lying on the ground beside him, tearing open the bag with his teeth and cursing as one of his teeth came free, falling to the ground, a bloodstained white triangle.

Hinata looked revolted as Katashi munched on his dried fish, pushing the corpse into the pit with his foot. The sound of the man's body landing on top of the others was wet and somehow… deadening.

"That all of them?"

"Yes," Hinata said from where she was kneeling in front of Kiba, setting his cheekbone. Shino hovered nearby, and Naruto quashed the fierce jealousy that rose inside him at the sight.

They were a team, and he and Katashi were the outsiders.

Another earth jutsu, and the grave closed, entombing them in soil. Another seal, and the earth of the clearing smoothed out, scars flattening, disappearing, until no passerby would ever know that twelve shinobi had died there.

"Sun's rising," Katashi said as he finished his ill-gotten snack, his hair dyed black with gore, a stripe of arterial blood smeared dark brown over his nose.

Naruto glanced up, joined Kiba and Hinata and Shino by the edge of the river, watching as the sun climbed over the horizon, shook off the low-hanging mists clinging to the trees, poured light over a world drowning in shadow.

The dew on the leaves hung red and heavy like drops of blood.

* * *

**Annotations**

"_Immortality is only a word. All that exists can die. Every living thing has a weapon against which it has no defense. Time. Disease. Iron. Guilt."_ – Spoken by Coaxmetal in Planescape: Torment.

_And Jiraiya was only glad that he would never have to make such a decision… that he could content himself with being a follower. _– Based on a line from Frank Herbert's God Emperor of Dune.

* * *

**A/N:** I hope you enjoyed the chapter; all reviews are hoarded and loved! All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile.


	27. Chapter 27

**A/N:** I received a beautiful picture of Riko, an awesome drawing of a scene from the last chapter, and an amazing drawing of Varg and his family from the lovely Amsuhl! The links are in my profile: go and worship and leave many comments! Hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

_Cracked eggs, dead birds  
Scream as they fight for life  
I can feel death, can see its beady eyes  
All these things into position  
All these things we'll one day swallow whole._

- 'Street Spirit (Fade Out)' by Radiohead

* * *

Iruka knocked on the jinchuuriki's door, surprised when a young girl flung it open immediately.

"Hey, there," he said, kneeling. She was adorable, and even the seal spiraling out from around her eye didn't mar her essential cuteness. She studied him for a long moment, then smiled, gap-toothed, and Iruka felt his heart melt.

"You must be Moriko, right? Is…" he glanced at the card Tsunade had given him, deciphering her scribbles, "Noboru Ito here?"

She nodded, turned around, and bounced down the hallway, weaving around piles of scrolls and kunai, yelling, "Noboru! Noboru! Nobo-"

"I'm right here," an elderly voice came from nearby, growing louder as Noboru Ito hobbled into view, leaning on his cane. Iruka blinked- he'd seen the jinchuuriki from afar, like most of Konoha's population, but he hadn't really understood just how aged Noboru was.

Yellow eyes flicked in his direction, Noboru straightening. "Ah." His voice was mild, deceptively friendly. "You must be Umino-san?"

"Please, call me Iruka," Iruka said, picking up his things and moving inside the apartment, closing the door behind him with his foot. A giant blond man passed through the living room, shirtless, exposing ropy scars on his back, not even pausing to say hello.

"Come back to my room, Iruka," Noboru said, swinging around and leading Iruka down the other hallway. "Do you have the lesson plans?"

Iruka paced himself to match Noboru's halting steps, clutching his files under his arm. "Yes, for all the grades from first year to sixth. Do you know what grade you want to teach?"

Noboru ushered him into a spare bedroom, empty of anything but an armchair, a rickety wooden chair, and a pile of books. "All of them. They should know how to protect themselves against poison gas attacks, and when it comes to poison-" he smiled, and Iruka was reminded again that this was the Butcher of Kusu- "no one knows more about it than me. They should know exactly what they're going to face."

"_Exactly_?" Iruka echoed, taking a seat on the wooden chair as Noboru eased himself down. "Why would you want to do that?"

It made no sense- the general policy was to spend the first two years teaching how to mold chakra, and to save the bitter truth that to be a shinobi was to be a murderer for the later years.

Sometimes, he hated his job, hated the fact that he was a man who taught twelve-year-olds and the odd eleven-year-old how to eviscerate another human being most effectively.

"Wouldn't it be better to leave them their innocence in the beginning, so that they'll fight harder? We need to keep the morale high."

Noboru's piercing gaze pinned him in his seat as the other man leaned forward, folding his hands on top of his cane, his mouth a flat line beneath the silver beard.

"You want to preserve their _innocence_?"

His voice was wondering.

"I hadn't known Konoha could be so cruel."

Iruka started from his seat, "What-"

"If you leave them their innocence," Noboru said, his eyes burning like twin chips of topaz, "then the first time they go out on that battlefield and see what wasteland they're condemned to, the shock will kill them more than the kunai, or the shrapnel, or the flame. If you leave them that naiveté, then you'll lose more of them then you ever thought you would. It is our solemn duty as teachers to let them know what they face, so that they will go forth into hell with open eyes.

"True courage is knowing the dangers you face and going anyway."

"I want them to be happy for as long as they can," Iruka said. "I want them to value human life for as long as they can."

Noboru's laugh was a thick, choked sound. "'Value?' You want them to value human life? By the time I was sixteen I regarded the deaths and wounding of several thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning skirmish, if you will, and it was good that I was so hardened."

"I don't want them to-"

"You don't want them to end up like me," Noboru finished.

"If it means they live, then I would want them all to be like you," Iruka said fiercely, fingernails digging into the file folder in his arms.

Noboru sank back into his chair, thoughtful, weary. "Of course you want them to live. Of course they want to live, because they are young. I learned a lesson in the war, you know." Iruka blinked, confused at the sudden change in the direction of the conversation. Noboru's thin shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath, took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt, his lips curling in something like a smile.

"Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is, and we were young."

* * *

Sakura entered the hospital, the doors swishing back and admitting her into air-conditioned coolness. Nurses and medic-nins hurried to and fro; family members sat outside doorways, their eyes hollow. She nodded to one of her former tutors, taking a left to duck into one of the back passages and hurry towards the emergency rooms.

The lights were dimmer here, and gurneys lined either side of the hallways. White sheets draped the gurneys, some blood-spotted, the forms of the bodies beneath hauntingly shapeless.

Her fingers curled tight around the letter in her hand, the paper crinkling.

There, the door to Operating Room B.

A leg stuck out from behind a gurney just in front of the door, clad in green scrubs.

That was odd; she slowed, leaned over the end of the waiting gurney, prepped with a spotless sheet.

Shinobu glanced up at her from where she was sitting on the floor, elbow resting on her cocked knee, flashing a watery smile. Her dark hair was bound back, and blood dyed the sleeves of her scrubs brown up to the elbow. Her hands were wracked with fine tremors.

"You okay?" Sakura slid around the edge of the gurney and took a seat on the other side of the hallway, smoothing out the crumpled letter on her thigh.

Shinobu seemed to be the friendliest out of the new jinchuuriki; certainly more sociable than Yugito was.

The story of how she had saved Toshiro had already circulated through the population of Konoha like wildfire, helped along by the ten lives she had saved from certain death yesterday.

It certainly made people more kindly disposed towards her, that was for sure.

"Yeah, fine," Shinobu said, shifting on the hard tile floor. She let her head thump back against the wall, closing her eyes. "I hate triage."

That explained it; Sakura didn't know a single medic-nin who had enjoyed the lessons on triage, on deciding who should die and who should live.

"I know the feeling," Sakura said. "What happened today?"

Shinobu rolled her neck, a sound like grinding gears filling the air. Sakura winced.

"We had eighteen people come in from the north," Shinobu said, her eyes still closed. "Got in an altercation with some Kumo shinobi guarding one of those huge shrapnel cannons- you know the ones?"

"Yeah."

"Well, six of the eighteen were black level."

Black.

'Expectant.' The poor people that were too injured to save; that were shuffled into a side room and given painkillers to ease the agony as they slipped from one life to the next.

"Two had burns over fifty percent of their bodies from lightning attacks. Lightning burns are pretty, in their own way," Shinobu mused, opening her eyes into dark slits. "Look kind of like trees in winter."

"And the others?"

Shinobu rubbed at her forehead with the back of her hand, shoulders rising as she took a deep breath. "One was in cardiac arrest from electricity overload; most of her cardiac muscle had died in the time it took to get here. One of the others had lost a leg, and his pelvis and lower abdominal organs were necrotic. As for the other two-" she stared with unfocused eyes, "-one had most of the bone covering his brain lopped off, and the other had atrial fibrillation, so his brain had been starved of oxygen."

Sakura didn't say she was sorry, because that couldn't do a thing.

Shinobu shrugged. "As for the other twelve, four were red, six yellow, and two were green."

"Well, they're all relatively fine, right?"

"Oh, yes," Shinobu said, her voice bitter as wormwood, "they're all perfectly okay. I got to stand there and labor on pulped tracheas and fractured pelvises while six people I could have helped died in the corner.

"I mean, not that their quality of life would've been that great. They would've been terribly scarred, brain-dead, or on a colostomy bag for the rest of their lives, but they'd be _alive._ They'd be _here_, and I could've-

"I could have saved them," Shinobu said, her fists clenching. "I could have- but I _couldn't._ The others weren't so bad off; if I worked on them, they could go back to the war. The black ones weren't-" a harsh sound tore its way up out of her, "They couldn't go back, even if I saved them. The medic-nins wanted me to work on the others, to make them viable soldiers again. But I-"

She banged her head back against the tile again, said again, her voice drained of all emotion, "I could have saved them."

Sakura swallowed, suddenly understanding the raw grief she could see brimming in Shinobu's eyes, in the twisted curve of her lips.

Shinobu slumped forward, resting her chin on her knee. "Their families are going to hate me."

Sakura jerked forward, half-reaching out to say "No," but subsided. "They're not going to hate you."

Why would they hate a woman who had saved so many?

"All of my patients back in Kusa did," Shinobu muttered, words muffled. "Like somehow they'd rather be dead than have me touch them, even to save them."

Sakura blinked; the people of Kusa were that ungrateful? But no, she amended, remembering the half-glimpsed fear in Tsunade's eyes as she told her about what Shinobu had done for Toshiro, they weren't that ungrateful.

They were that afraid.

"They don't hate you," she repeated. "Here." She stretched out her arm, handing the letter to Shinobu, who took it, frowning, turning over the cat-print envelope in her hands.

"What's this?"

"It's a letter from Toshiro's wife. We met when I was doing my medic-nin specialization: she teaches anatomy at the school for medics. She wanted to thank you."

Shinobu's face was blank, the envelope stilling in her hands. "Thank… me?"

The disbelief in her voice broke Sakura's heart.

"Yeah."

Shinobu didn't seem to know what to do with the letter, staring at the envelope as though she'd never seen one before in her life.

"Go on. Open it."

Shinobu tore the envelope open, fishing out the note and unfolding it. Her dark eyes flicked back and forth behind her spectacles, lips moving as she read it, brows drawing further together with each sentence like gathering storm clouds.

She finished it and sat, utterly still, her eyes wide and wondering. "She invited me over any time for tea and cookies as a token of gratitude for saving her husband's life. She _thanked _me. She said I was…" her voice broke, "a good person."

"You should go," Sakura said, heart aching at the look in Shinobu's eyes, the disbelief reminding her so much of the look in Sasuke's eyes the first time she'd slipped her arm around his shoulder, that long, terrible night after Naruto's departure.

"I… wouldn't know what to do," Shinobu said, laying the letter down on her knee, shifting. "Noboru tried to teach us the tea ceremony and proper etiquette, but the others didn't really care, so after a while he just stopped trying. I don't even have any nice clothes. Even these scrubs belong to the hospital, although-" she picked at the dried blood on her sleeve, nose wrinkling, "I don't know if they'll want these back now."

"I'm not scheduled to be deployed for another week," Sakura offered. "If you want, I could take you shopping."

"You'd do that?"

"Sure! It could be fun- hey, I mean it!" she said, catching the dubious look in her eyes. "Just because I'm an ANBU doesn't mean I don't like to dress up once in a while."

Shinobu blinked, and then, tentative, afraid, her lips curled into a smile. "I'd like that." She stilled suddenly, eyes fixed on the shadow cast by the gurney beside her. White eyes gleamed like diamonds within the darkness, became tangible as the tiny demon hauled itself free, skittered across the green tile in a black blob, sparking with chakra.

Six spindly legs propelled up her leg, two amorphous wings fluttering in the breeze of Shinobu's breath as she leaned close, set her ear by its tiny, fanged mouth, listening to its strange chattering. Its white eyes rolled as Sakura watched, something- not quite fear, more like… apprehension- making the hairs on her arms rise, drying her mouth out.

"How many? Uh-huh." Shinobu pulled back to stare at the beast for a moment, seemingly forgetting that Sakura was there, before leaning back in. "Where from?" Another string of chattering. "Did you see the injuries?" Her lips pressed together into a thin line. "Okay, thanks. I'll tell the others to start prepping." Sakura watched, wide-eyed, as the demon slid down Shinobu's leg and sank into the shadow without a sound, only relaxing when the last bit of its tail disappeared.

"I'm guessing that's my cue to go," Sakura said, pushing herself to her feet, her spine protesting.

"Yeah," Shinobu said, standing, the line of stress around her mouth deeper now. "A three-man patrol's just returned from the Suna border. One of them's half-dead from dysentery, and one's had her arm practically degloved." She steeled herself, setting her shoulders. "Sorry for running out on you."

"No, no, it's okay!" Sakura tried to reach out, to comfort, but drew back as Shinobu sidled away from her hand like a nervous horse. "I, um- I'll come by the apartment to pick you up to go shopping," she finished lamely.

Shinobu half-smiled, nodded. "Looking forward to it." And then she pushed her way through the double doors into the operating room and was gone.

She ran her fingers through her short hair in frustration. Even Shinobu, bubbly and brilliant, a last defense against certain death for so many of their wounded, was shattered: without the other jinchuuriki around to lend her support, she was unable to believe that people could like her, that she was a good person.

And there was nothing Sakura could really do: the ruined mental conditions of the jinchuuriki took a backseat to the war.

As it should be, but something very like guilt still burned acrid in her throat when she thought of the disbelieving look in Shinobu's eyes.

She performed the teleportation jutsu, landing in the living room of Sasuke's apartment. Although, in a testament to their partnership, Sasuke had stopped referring to it as 'my apartment', now calling it '_our_ apartment.'

She could feel him brooding in the kitchen from where she stood by the couch that served as her bed when she slept here, which was most nights. His bad mood permeated the air, weighed on her shoulders like something tangible.

"Sasuke?" She leaned around the doorframe, peering into the kitchen.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, his kunai and shuriken spread out on a cloth before him, his hands occupied with cleaning a kunai with short, sharp strokes.

Oh, that was not good- Sasuke only went on cleaning benders when he was _really_ pissed.

She toed off her shoes and padded across the tile, toes curling against the cold, to slump into a chair across from him.

"What happened?"

Sasuke glanced up at her, then back down at his work, his voice clipped as he muttered, "Naruto left yesterday morning for the coast."

'_What?' _But he had just _gotten_ here, back to Konoha, back where he belonged.

"He didn't even say goodbye?"

"No." Kunai shined mirror-bright, he laid it aside and picked up a shuriken. All the kunai gleamed; he had to have been doing this for at least two hours.

"Well, was he assigned by Tsunade?"

His shoulders slumped. "Yeah. He went out with Katashi and Shino's team to go take out the Kiri fleet, although I think Katashi's going to be doing most of the actual destruction of the ships."

Sakura rubbed at her temples, simultaneously annoyed at Sasuke's pettiness and sympathetic with his anger. "If Tsunade assigned him, then there's no point in getting angry about it. He went where he was needed, and he'll come back when he's finished."

Sasuke's hands stilled on the shuriken. "Or he might not come back at all."

Sakura swallowed hard. "Don't- don't say that." The idea was too terrible to contemplate: Naruto, Naruto who they had spent six long years searching for, who had saved the jinchuuriki from insanity, dead on the ground, rotting in the earth, bloated in the water.

Sasuke stared down at the table, kunai reflected as silver points of light in his black eyes.

"I don't want him to die. I want him to stay around for seventy years to annoy me half to death. I want to spar with him and insult him and hell, I even want to see him make Hokage. I want him to make you head of the hospital, and me head of the ANBU, and I want him to stay here, with us.

"And I know it's petty and stupid of me to be angry, but I wish he'd stayed here, where we… don't have to worry about losing him a second time."

"We won't."

Sasuke met her eyes for a moment. "I hope not."

The light from the window gleamed silver on the blade of her naginata, leaning in the corner.

"Have you already checked your gear?" she asked him, rising to pick it up. He nodded, pointing his chin in the direction of the doorway.

"I already laid out your blacks and armor in the bedroom. Everything looks good, but you might want to give them a thorough going-over."

"Thanks," she said, squeezing his shoulder, waiting until he turned to meet her gaze.

"He'll come back," she whispered.

He nodded finally, a short, sharp jerk of the head, and turned to his work.

She went into the bedroom, stared at the silver and black laid out across the bed, the white mask with the face of a wildcat, the kunai laid out across the foot like silver snowflakes:

The accoutrements of war.

* * *

Kakashi found her in the graveyard.

She was sitting beneath the spreading branches of a cypress tree, her hands buried wrist-deep in earth, her eyes closed, the dappled shadows of the leaves leaving arcane patterns on her skin. Her cheek twitched as if in a nervous tic, black fire twining up her thin arms.

He crossed over, making enough noise to warn her of his presence, to lean against the cypress. Her eyes flickered open, gleamed blue as she glanced at him, her gaze full of muted contempt.

"Hatake."

"What're you doing?" he asked, nodding at where her limbs disappeared into the soil. She looked down with a grimace and extricated herself, wiping her palms off on her ANBU-issue black trousers.

"Calming the Nekomata; if it goes too long without interaction with the dead, it tends to get…" her shoulders dropped, her posture one of exhaustion, "-difficult."

Interacting with the dead? Kakashi frowned beneath his mask; any techniques dealing with corpses were forbidden, and with good reason: they were desecrations of the spirits of the dead.

"What exactly can you do with them?" He kept his voice blandly friendly, but knew she wasn't fooled by his pleasant façade, her smirk amused. She flipped her long hair back over her shoulder and peered up into his face, her smile having entirely too many teeth.

"Speak to them. I have some of their memories, although the more decayed the corpse, the less I can get. Even the oldest corpses have their deaths imprinted on their bones, though."

Kakashi's eye darted involuntarily to his father's grave. He didn't want to think of her having his father's death imprinted on her brain, of knowing the feeling of a tanto in the belly.

His father's death was his memory, no one else's. And although it was nowhere near sane to be so possessive of the image of his father falling forward as his guts spilled out pink-white, Kakashi had never been the best of friends with sanity.

"I can raise them, too," she continued, the fire on her skin dissipating. "It takes a fair amount of chakra per body, and if they're missing over half their bones, then it's impossible, but they can use all the techniques they knew in life. They make good sacrifices if it comes down to a firefight." She shrugged. "Most I've ever raised without the Nekomata's help was ten."

Kakashi fought the urge to blink: while kunoichi had much more precise chakra than male shinobi, they paid for it with diminished chakra reserves. If she had the precision of kunoichi with a chakra reserve greater than his own, then she was truly a force to be reckoned with, especially if someone put her under a genjutsu.

That issue being the reason he was here today.

"The Hokage gave me a copy of your survey, since we're going to be working together."

Yugito looked completely disinterested, fiddling with the worn straps on her belt pouch- although her fingers were trembling, as if in rage or fear. "And?" Her voice was as hollow as the grave.

"You said that you couldn't resist genjutsu."

"That'd be correct."

Kakashi wanted to sigh, but restrained himself: if he was laconic, this woman was practically _mute_.

"Is it from the Nekomata, or a bloodline weakness, or something else?"

Yugito looked up at him, her expression eerie in its flatness. "It's a particular weakness of the Nekomata, along with healing jutsu being useless." She turned towards him, folding her arms across her chest. "The Nekomata's chakra is the antithesis of living chakra, so healing jutsu are incompatible."

'_Just fucking great. Now I have two things to worry about. She'd better be worth it._'

Kakashi rubbed at his eye, feeling the onset of a headache. "In normal shinobi, they release themselves from genjutsu by interrupting their own chakra flow, but since you're unable to do that…" he shoved his hands in his pockets and turned around, inviting her to walk with him with a jerk of his head.

The graveyard was for the dead, and for now- if only for now- they were alive.

"I'll need to tap you when you're under a genjutsu and disrupt your chakra with my own." He glanced sideways at her, the side of her mouth curling in a frown. "I'm guessing the idea doesn't appeal?"

They entered Konoha proper, the streets brimming full of evacuees and Konoha citizens. The refugees from Kerumigakure were everywhere: there had been some amusing, if suspect, stories of the Kerumigakure citizens breaking down in panic when they encountered Varg taking Moriko to the Academy.

"I don't react well to people I don't know touching me," Yugito finally said, avoiding his eyes. "It'd be best for you to use a clone, in case I react badly."

"'Badly' as in…?"

They passed by an alleyway where evacuees were sleeping, the hostels and open rooms of Konoha all filled to bursting. There were even refugees sleeping in the Hyuuga Clan compound.

"As in I might stab you," she said. "Or use a Raikyu, or any number of things."

They strolled past the Hokage Tower, where the jounin guards cast measuring glances at Yugito, and towards the jinchuuriki's apartment building. Kakashi grit his teeth: her plan was so impractical, such a waste of valuable chakra, and he couldn't even blame her for it because he'd seen the way Riko reacted to being touched: she'd had a seizure when Izumo grabbed her by the arm to steer her to the newest well site.

"That won't always work," he said. "I am one of the stronger shinobi on the continent-"

"Quite true," Yugito interrupted, and her agreement nearly threw Kakashi completely off balance. The jinchuuriki of the Nekomata, who had professed in every word she had ever spoken to _hate_ normal humans, considered him one of the stronger shinobi on the continent? He wasn't sure whether to be flattered or mildly disturbed.

"Yes," he fumbled, searching for his train of thought, "-but my chakra reserve is lower than most, due to my Sharingan: it's a chakra hog, and if I'm forced to use it, which I probably will be, I might not have enough chakra to spare to create a clone to break you out."

"What exactly is our mission?" Yugito asked, glancing from side to side at the citizens of Konoha. Some met her gaze, as if in an attempt to prove that they didn't fear her; some ducked their heads and hurried by, clutching packages to their chests; no one smiled.

Kakashi fished out the mission specifications from his pocket, handing the crumpled packet of paper to her. "In a nutshell, ten of those new shrapnel cannons will be within ten miles of the village in five days. The Hokage wants us to leave tomorrow afternoon, heading northwest. There's a map of the proposed route in the packet. We'd loop around, taking out each of the cannons, and return to Konoha. Estimated time to complete the mission is ten days."

"Hm," Yugito muttered. He glanced over to see her reaction, then stared, engrossed in the fluidity of her movements, every motion radiating coiled power, as if she could leap a hundred feet in the air at any moment. Even ANBU didn't walk like that; it had to be a sign of the Nekomata.

Slanted, reflective eyes, feline grace; there was no way she could hide what she was.

"She said there's around fifty shinobi guarding each of the cannons." Yugito opened the packet, flipped through the pages, "Haven't fought Ame in a while, and that country's an intelligence black hole as far as their shinobi techniques go, but at least they're only on two; Kusa's pretty easy to take down, and they're stationed on four of them." She grimaced as she turned a page. "Iwa on three. Ah." Her smile was bitter. "Moya has the one to the north. That should be enjoyable."

"So you realize why I need to conserve my chakra," Kakashi said as they passed by one of the three shinobi markets in town, the market empty of vendors, all of their wares conscripted into the stockpiles for the shinobi. "I need to be able to disrupt your chakra flow as myself, if necessary."

"Yeah," she said dismissively as they entered the foyer of the apartment building where the jinchuuriki lived. A evacuated family from Kerumigakure was living in the space beneath the staircase, their suspicious eyes glued to Yugito.

She waved sardonically at them, backpedaling as a small child toddled out of the shadows beneath the stairs, burbling some unintelligible nonsense at her.

She was distracted.

It was now or never-

He reached out, grabbed her shoulder, and switched with the broken plastic chair as soon as he felt his fingers contact skin.

Standing to the side, he could appreciate the way Yugito twisted, foot coming up to smash the chair up into the air, kusarigama whirling up off its place at her hip in a tornado of silver light, blade spearing the seat of the chair, three balls of lightning plowing, one after the other, into the hapless object.

The evacuees scrambled for the exit, the door banging shut.

Silence.

Melted plastic dripped, puddled on the floor at her feet. She stared down at it, as still and cold as a statue carved from ice.

If Kakashi had been the object of her wrath, he would have been hard-pressed to avoid injury. He probably wouldn't have _died_, but he wouldn't want to bet on it.

His mouth was dry with something like awe; he couldn't remember the last time he'd been honestly _impressed_ with another shinobi's strength.

"Remarkable," he said, holding his ground as her dulled gaze drifted up to pin him in place.

He had to strain to hear her voice as she said, kusarigama swinging from her fingers, "Don't do that again, or next time it will be you at my feet."

Kakashi sighed, moving out of the corner.

"Look, here's the issue. This isn't going to work if you do-" he nodded at the hardening plastic at her feet, "-_that_ to all my clones, or to me. Are you even going to be able to trust me enough to allow me to watch your back?"

Yugito's silence- her complete lack of faith in any human being- made something cold and bitter with grief expand inside his chest.

"Have you _ever_ worked on a team?"

She had to have had an ANBU team if she was experienced enough to be sent out with him, and ANBU never worked alone. The partner system was as deeply entrenched in the culture of ANBU as the masks: it kept them sane, kept them alive.

Yugito swung around to face him fully, her eyes glowing blue in the dimness, every muscle radiating tension, her mouth a white slash of rage as she spat black-tinged blood onto the ground. She reeked of contempt. She was beautiful.

"There was no team when I was a genin, none when I was a chuunin or a jounin, none when I was an ANBU. They didn't want to work with me, and I didn't want to work with them." The light from the window slid across her neck, over the thin scarf, the black shadows of the seal muted by the cloth. Her voice changed, became ragged, as Kakashi stared, fascinated, as the blood streaked her teeth black-red, the Nekomata's chakra tearing her throat to shreds like a bird caught beneath the claws of a cat. "The jinchuuriki are my team; I need no one else. I _want_ no one else."

Kakashi sighed, shoulders slumping. "Am I going to be able to trust _you_ to watch _my_ back? Because the Hokage has demanded we work together, and if I'm going to need to cover myself as well as you, I need to know now."

Yugito's brow furrowed in confusion- no doubt because of his tired acceptance of her sociopathy- before she stalked forward, stared up into his face, her expression considering. "Naruto said he wanted you alive. That you were important to him."

Something warm unfurled in Kakashi's chest, something foreign: joy.

She tilted her head, as if somehow she could see beneath the mask to the terrible, ragged scar beneath that curled over his lip, to the smile there. "So you can trust me to keep you alive, for Naruto's sake. But don't trust me with your secrets, or your problems."

Kakashi leaned back against the wall. Well, she didn't need to worry: he had no secrets or problems to entrust to anyone. His problems- his broken sanity- were his own.

Although, as he looked at the proud, cruel spirit burning in those ice-blue eyes, he realized that he had finally met someone even more broken then him.

He couldn't resist needling her, finding out more; for that was the failing of a genius. They wanted to understand.

"Would you have cared if Naruto hadn't said that?"

'_Will I be able to call you partner, or will we be some sad mockery of teammates?_'

Yugito stepped back, the rage fading from her eyes to be replaced with resignation, her smile a twisted, mocking thing. "No."

She was too young to be so broken.

* * *

"Hey," Shinobu whispered as she entered Riko's room, the room lit only with the smallest candle they could find, the metal shield before the flame only letting enough light through to illuminate the bed and chair as lumps of shadow.

There was no window; it would admit too much light.

Riko was in the chair, wasted legs curled beneath her, her blindfold lying over her palms like a snake of brown leather, the slash of white in her mahogany hair glinting silver.

"Hey," Riko replied just as quietly, turning her amber eyes to Shinobu. Shinobu studied her for a long moment, memorizing the sight of those eyes, such a rare thing to see now. Riko's hands were trembling, her eyes unfocused, not quite tracking Shinobu as she moved closer, kneeling on the carpet.

"The demons said you had a seizure today?" Riko nodded. Shinobu reached for Riko's wrist as she spoke, her thumb and middle finger easily curling around her sister's wrist. Riko's pulse, thin and thready, shuddered against her skin, too fast- 110 beats per minute.

"Tachycardia, correct?" Riko said, watching Shinobu with glazed eyes. Shinobu glanced up, saw Riko's chest heave as she tried to catch her breath.

Tears burned in her eyes as she busied herself pulling out Riko's file, the folder bulging with papers and diagrams and the entire record of a life ending seizure by seizure.

There was so little she could do- not against progressive diseases, and anyway it was dangerous to muck about in a brain as fragile and unraveled as Riko's. The man with traumatic brain injury, she could fix- it wasn't too severe.

This was, and there was nothing she could do.

"Here." She shook out two antiarrhythmic pills into her palm, pushing them in Riko's direction as she scribbled out her latest report.

A small hand pushed her hand away, the pills falling to the carpet, bouncing, once, twice.

'_What?_'

"Riko?" Shinobu rose onto her knees, stared up into Riko's pale face, her lips tinged blue. "What's wrong, dear?"

Riko blinked hard, swallowing. The words hissed into the air, carrying the end of all hope.

"I'm… I'm done."

Shinobu tried to smile, even as something cold and sharp uncoiled inside her. "W- what?"

Riko sighed, thin shoulders rising, falling, her attempt at a smile crumbling into a twisted expression of misery. "I'm done. I'm tired of the pills and the scans and the tests; I'm tired of always hoping that somehow I'll…" she paused, brain stuttering, the symptom of incurable deterioration, a minute passing in the dark before she spoke again, "…I'll wake up, and the probability will be different."

No.

_No_.

She couldn't be _giving up_-

"What's the probability now?" Shinobu whispered. Riko's legs twitched beneath her fingers, muscles spasming even as Shinobu tried to calm them with small pulses of healing chakra. Riko laid her hands over Shinobu's, traced the ratio on the back of her right hand.

Ten-to-one in favor of survival.

Ten seizures left; maybe twelve, if they were lucky.

"But I can do something, just let me try- I might have a new idea-"

Riko's hands clenched on Shinobu's fingers, the grip hovering just on the edge of pain, her voice as flat and cold as ice.

"You can't help me. You've attempted to for six years, and if the power of the Hachibi can't solve this, then…" a hiss of frustration, "-nothing can. And I refuse to sit in this apartment and be obsolete. I will contribute, even it accelerates my-" a ragged breath that hewed Shinobu's heart from her chest, hot tears brimming in her eyes, "-deterioration. It's going to happen within the year; what's the difference if it happens this month or the next? So no more pills. No more tests. No more keeping me inside. No more attempts to stretch this out any more than it already has been. What will come will come."

Shinobu couldn't breathe. She was frozen, staring up into Riko's face, a face imbued with unnatural serenity, unnatural acceptance. She couldn't let this go, couldn't let _her_ go without saying something, something-

She blurted, "Don't you want to stay alive to be with Gaara for as long as you can? He needs you, you know?"

"_Gaara?_" Riko's laugh was high-pitched, humming with ugly things. "Gaara can't even say that he _loves_ me!"

"He does, he does, _oh God,_ we all do, and-" she turned her hands palm-up in Riko's grip, clutched her hands tight as if anchoring her to earth when Riko was straining to fly away, "-please, please, don't go."

Riko extricated her hand from Shinobu's, reached out, touched her hair- benediction and forgiveness for this, Shinobu's ultimate failure- and smiled even as tears slipped like drops of liquid gold down her face. Her smile was as aged and patient as the earth. "Everything dies. Not everything grows old."

'_Oh, god,_' and Shinobu reached out, and Riko fell- for she was having trouble walking, and Varg carried her most places- into her arms, Shinobu enfolding her- gently, gently, not even hinting at pressure- in an embrace.

She was thin, so thin, all wasted muscle and protruding bone, her face- hot with tears- pressed into Shinobu's neck, the mountains of her spine shuddering against the inside of Shinobu's arm as she took a great gasp of air, expelled it in a broken sob that lingered in the air.

She was twelve years old and she had spent her entire life dying.

The darkness was all around them, the flickering light of the candle illuminating Riko's bare, skinny feet, smeared with dirt. Shinobu's throat closed up as a harsh sob tore its way out of her.

Those feet would never dance at Riko's wedding. They would never walk into Riko's child's bedroom. They would never grow wrinkled and veined with age.

They would remain forever young, forever beautiful, unchanging as a dead insect trapped in amber.

Tears rolled hot and prickly down Shinobu's face, her chest aching as she held Riko close, running her hand through hair covered in dust and earth-

And no one, _no one_, deserved this pain, this grief that had bowed Riko's shoulders, made her old before her time. The injustice of it, the knowledge that any child could have been condemned to this the way Riko had been condemned, coiled around her lungs and squeezed like a steel vise.

Riko slurred against her skin, her face hidden from view, as if the sight of her tears was an admission of criminal weakness, "Is it… okay for me to go?"

And Shinobu, who had thought that nothing, _nothing_, could be crueler than this, choked on a sob as grief expanded to encompass her entire body in a harsh clot of aching agony.

There were no words but the obvious, no words to encapsulate all that she felt at that moment as the strongest girl she had ever known stared death in the face and accepted her end.

"It's okay," Shinobu murmured through her tears, pressing a kiss into dark hair as she closed her eyes against the darkness, rocked Riko in her arms as the one girl she could not save wept into her shoulder, every drop of warmth onto her shoulder a knife in the heart.

"It's okay."

* * *

**Annotations**

"_By the time I was sixteen I regarded the deaths and wounding of several thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning skirmish, if you will, and it was good that I was so hardened."_ – An allusion to a letter written by General William Tecumseh Sherman to his wife in 1864.

"_Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is, and we were young."_ – A line from A.E. Housman's poem 'Here Dead We Lie.'

"_Everything dies. Not everything grows old."_ – From St. Augustine's Confessions.

* * *

**A/N:** Next chapter, the first large-scale battle begins! I hope you're all as excited as I am! All questions should go in the forum linked in my profile.


	28. Chapter 28

**A/N: **Amsuhl has outdone herself once again with her amazing artwork! I received several wonderful pictures: a picture of Yugito and Shinobu together, a lovely picture of Riko and Gaara together with excellent shading, a painting of Freyja and Moriko together in a forest, a portrait of Katashi fishing, and an amazing picture of Riko and Shinobu together in a scene from last chapter. Go worship and leave many, many comments: her pictures really inspire me and help me get out chapters faster. All the pictures are linked in my profile. This chapter, like all the others, was betaed by the amazing AisCrim. Hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

_Skin against skin blood and bone  
You're all by yourself but you're not alone  
You wanted in now you're here  
Driven by hate consumed by fear  
Let the bodies hit the floor _

- 'Let the Bodies Hit the Floor' by Drowning Pool

* * *

There was one distinct advantage to traveling with Katashi, Naruto reflected as the team settled down to camp in the branches of a sprawling oak.

The Isonade, like all sharks, could tune in to the Earth's magnetic fields, with the result that no matter where they were, Katashi always knew which way was north. It'd come in handy more than a few times in the past two days: Kiba tended to get completely disoriented after a skirmish, of which they'd had ten on their way to the sea.

Naruto watched Katashi clean his sword, bent over it with a cloth and a small bottle of oil, the blade gleaming blue-silver in the dim green light filtering down through the leaves, the ripple down the blade mimicking the ocean Katashi loved so well.

He watched Katashi's fingers move in deft motions, hands already used to the feel of wiping off sticky, viscous blood and bone fragments. Remembered Katashi vibrating at his side like a chained wolf, eager for the hunt, secure in the belief that he was invincible.

He believed he was invincible- because he was young-

but no one was invincible anymore- not even a jinchuuriki.

"Katashi…" Naruto said, waiting until Katashi turned to face him, his eyes wary, "promise me something."

Katashi studied him, his brow furrowed, before he finally said, "Okay…"

Naruto leaned back against the tree, the bark digging into his spine, and tore the wrapper of his ration bar to shreds between his fingers. "You know how Noboru always tells you to slow down and be patient?"

Katashi's back stiffened, his brother sensing an oncoming lecture. Naruto closed his eyes and ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, muttering,

"Don't worry, I'm not going to lecture you. Remember how Noboru used to make me sit there for hours while he talked about different element combinations? After going through _that_, there's no way in Hell I'm going to subject you to one."

"You're the one that wanted to know all the combinations," Katashi said, grinning at him as Naruto opened his eyes. "So it's your own damn fault, anyway."

"I didn't think he could talk about it for five hours _straight_!"

Katashi raised an eyebrow. "This is Noboru we're talking about, remember? He could talk about a cup of tea for days if he had to."

Naruto flopped onto his back, groaning at the prospect. "Oh, god, he'd probably go on about each tea having nuances of toast and an audacious character or something, you know, the way he talks about sake."

Katashi wiped the blade down one last time before sliding it back into the sheath, the blue shine of metal disappearing, and laying it aside. He scooted over to Naruto's side, screwing up his nose as he caught a whiff of Naruto's aroma.

That was the worst part about being on campaign: the complete lack of hygiene. They all had one change of clothes, a bar of scentless soap each, and a bottle of shampoo each, but there hadn't been any time to bathe, and anyway there weren't any convenient rivers nearby. Katashi was the worst off, honestly: Naruto could only thank his lucky stars that he'd finally stopped having acne, because poor Katashi was breaking out like nobody's business.

"Oh, screw you," Naruto said, catching the frown and elbowing Katashi in the hip, "at least I don't look like someone rubbed my face in bacon grease."

"Ow," Katashi deadpanned, but he finally couldn't resist grinning. "You wanted me to promise you something, right?"

It felt as if someone had drenched Naruto in ice water. He didn't know what to say; he didn't have the words to express his fear that Katashi would see the chance to make a difference, to have his life matter, and he would grab onto it with both hands and…

That he would be so arrogant that he would think that he could take on the world, and the world would beat him down as it had beaten him down so many times before.

That his foolish, arrogant, adored younger brother would try to be a hero.

He took a deep breath, but that didn't help the festering knot in his stomach. "Promise me," and the words fell flat in the silence, too small to hold his fears, "that you won't try to be a hero."

Katashi rested his chin on his knees, arms wrapped around his bent knees, the posture of an abandoned child.

Sickness twisted in Naruto's gut at the reminder that Katashi, for all his skill and all his strength and all his stubbornness, was still only fifteen years old.

"I don't want to be a hero. I mean, I _do_, but not- not that kind of hero. Not a true hero."

'_Whatever did he mean?_' Naruto sat up, blinking. Katashi glanced sidelong at him, his voice softening as he spoke of the woman that meant more to him than anything else in the world.

"Rei used to tell me something. She said that heroes get to come home, because they didn't do something that was _truly_ heroic, worthy of being remembered. True heroes do something so brave and stupid and amazing that they're remembered forever, but it comes at a high price," Katashi said, glancing sideways at Naruto. "She used to say, 'True heroes don't get to come home.'"

Katashi let Naruto loop an arm around his shoulders, leaned into the embrace. Naruto tightened his grip, his throat clenching as he felt Katashi's bones press against his skin.

Katashi's shoulders rose and fell like a ship in a storm as he sighed, before he turned his thin face to Naruto's.

"Promise me," Naruto repeated, and he _hated_ the note of pleading in his voice.

Katashi smiled with bloody lips, the motion opening further cuts, the expression of joy causing pain.

"I promise."

* * *

On the seventh day, they came to the sea.

The sky was gray and brooding, roiling with storm clouds as they stood on the cliff and gazed out where the gray sea, marked with white foam, met the monochromatic sky.

"There they are," Kiba said, waving at a dully-colored bird that soared overhead, its eyes penetrating.

"There _who _is?" Katashi asked, bouncing from one foot to the other, gazing down at the churning water with naked longing.

"The scouts-" the bird screeched, folded its wings in and dove in a flash of beige, backwinging to settle on a rock, golden eyes harsh.

Hinata performed a seal, the rock shimmering for a moment.

A rope ladder, encrusted with salt and bleached from time, appeared before them, leading over the edge of the cliff.

"Akamaru, you stay up here, okay? I'll be back in a little bit." The nin-dog grumbled, butting his head against Kiba's hip, but settled down a little ways back from the edge, gazing after them as they descended the ladder.

Naruto went last, the wind howling in his ears, nose pressed to the gray stone of the cliff, pockmarked with wind and wave. The salt crystals cut into his palms.

He glanced down once.

The sea churned in a white storm at the bottom of the cliff, rocks piercing the surface like spears, the roaring of the cataract almost enough to drown out the wind. He whipped back around, pressing himself closer to the rock face, swallowing as the blood pounded in his ears.

Eyes closed, he inched down the rope, opening his eyes once his feet finally touched soil.

Two strange shinobi sat cross-legged on their pallets in the tiny rock cave, woven from the stiff grasses of the coast. One woman, one man, their faces worn and weathered as stone, impassive in the flickering torchlight, hands callused from rough living. Their clothes were ragged, stitched together from leather.

"Takumi and Manami are part of our scout network," Kiba said, plopping down on a nearby rock. "They've been in charge of this section of ocean for… ten years, something like that." Shino stood in the corner, arms folded, his hair plastered to his forehead with crusted salt. "Anyway," Kiba continued blithely, "what's the situation?"

Manami spoke first, her voice clipped with a strange accent. "Tsubame-" she nodded at the bird, which perched on a stick propped against the wall, tearing apart some hapless small creature with its beak, "-has seen twelve ships, approximately three miles out."

"How many masts?" Katashi demanded.

"Three ships with three masts, ten with two, and two with four."

"_That's_ not good," Katashi muttered.

"How so?" Shino said.

"A four-mast ship is a _big_ deal," Katashi explained, leaning back on his hands. "See, Kiri doesn't have much wood, and the surrounding islands are mostly rock. We have to import most of our lumber from some of the islands outside of our boundaries, which makes it really expensive. And a four-mast ship is the biggest you can get; Kiri only had two when I left, so they're really going all out if they're sending the best of their navy over. Probably about two-thirds of their shinobi are on those ships."

"In case you've forgotten," Shino said dryly, "this _is_ all-out war."

"Hah. Hah," Katashi said. He turned back to Manami, leaning out of the way of Takumi, who went by him and hauled a rope up from the cataract below. Clams were encrusted on it, and he cut several off and started to pry them open.

The contents looked vaguely like undersea snot.

"So what's the ocean floor like around here? Shallow, deep, any big drop offs or reefs?"

Manami leaned forward a little, sketching a map in the sand littering the cave floor. "Two miles out, there is a large trench in the ocean floor that is approximately three-thousand feet deep. A plain is here-" she sketched out a curvy line.

"Why's the depth so important?" Kiba asked.

"Water pressure," Katashi answered, coming up off his hands to crouch above the map, watching as Manami finished sketching the map. "If I need to, I can drag people down far enough that they're crushed by the pressure."

Hinata winced.

"Better than drowning," Katashi said, catching sight of her expression, "and anyway it's really hard to drown a Kiri-nin."

Naruto joined Kiba where he sat at the edge of the cave, staring out at the ocean. The ships of Kiri heaved into view, black spots like algae bobbing on the water, their masts trees without branches against the sky.

"How come I never heard of this scout network in Academy?"

Kiba glanced sidelong at him, baring his teeth in a distinctly unfriendly expression. "Because most of them are missing-nin from other countries that escaped here after committing terrible crimes. We offered them asylum and assistance if necessary, as long as they scout for us."

Naruto got the feeling Kiba still considered him a missing-nin.

"And those two?"

Kiba rolled his shoulders, cracking filling the air. "Takumi and Manami?"

"Yeah. What're they here for?"

"They're from Kiri, originally. Had a connection to one of the clans that got wiped out- they were retainers or some shit- and went berserk. Flooded a hospital full of civilians, burned down a bunch of houses with people inside, then fled here."

"And what keeps them from leaving?"

Kiba nodded at the seals inked on the back of Takumi's hand. "The minute one of them leaves this cave, bam. Dead."

"And being stuck in this cave is better than being dead?"

Kiba's smile was sharp. "You know what they say about Kiri-nins: stubborn to the end."

The ships rose and fell, dark against the gray sky, and the wind roared like an enraged beast.

"Let's just hope these guys are exceptions," Naruto muttered.

Katashi made a noise of affirmation, then bounced to his feet, joining them. "Got a plan!"

Naruto rolled his head back, staring upside-down at Katashi. "Spill it."

"I'm going to swim out and transform, break the ships apart, and drown the ones I can get in the trench. The others are going to head straight for land; I don't know if you've ever tried running on the ocean before, instead of on a river, but it's a lot tougher. Most of them should be exhausted by the time they reach the beach, so you guys can just cut them apart. I mean, there's going to be a lot, so don't freak if they get by you. They'll all join up anyway, so we can just take them out on the way back from the coast."

"T-transform?" Hinata said.

"Some of the jinchuuriki can do that," Naruto said, very carefully _not_ looking at her.

Just another reminder of how different they were, how much more powerful, and the price they had paid for that power.

"Oh." The sound of clams frying in the pan came from the back as she looked down, then up at him. "Can you?"

"I've only done it once," he shrugged. "But Gaara, Yugito, Katashi, and Noboru can all do it at will."

"The Isonade isn't as powerful- shut up, dick-"

"I didn't say anything!" Naruto protested.

"You were smiling," Katashi said primly. "Anyway, the Kyuubi's too powerful to go all the way. Shinobu transformed once, but she only got to five tails. She said that going any higher probably would've killed her. So Naruto could maybe do three tails, if he had to."

'_Could you just shut _up? _I never wanted them to know in the first place, never wanted them to see what lives inside me._'

"Can we _go_ now?" Naruto interrupted. "And where's this beach you mentioned, anyway?"

"About half a mile that way." Katashi pointed. "Pretty rocky and small, but it's flat, so it's where they'll head. They'd usually just drop anchor about half a mile out and let the shinobi swim to the shore."

His smile was fierce as the ocean currents. "But they're not going to get that far."

* * *

The beach was in a small bay, gravel crunching beneath their feet as the wind lashed through their hair. Boulders littered the landscape, moss and dead seaweed draped over them like dead men's fingers. Crabs plopped into tidepools, and seagulls stared at them with bright, suspicious eyes.

Shino glanced around, the kikai humming disconsolately beneath his skin, annoyed by the wind. "Kiba and Akamaru will take the middle. Hinata and Naruto will take the front while I pick off the stragglers. Katashi?"

Katashi glanced up from where he was already standing waist-deep in the gray water, his expression one of total bliss.

Naruto watched Katashi cup some water in his hand, an idiotically joyful smile on his face, and wondered if he was jealous that his bijuu didn't have any particular elemental affinity. Gaara knew joy in the desert, Katashi in ocean, Moriko in gardens. And while the Kyuubi was supposedly tied into fire, he'd never felt that all-consuming sense of peace the others seemed to have.

"Yeah?" Katashi asked, letting the water fall as he turned around, hair waving in the burgeoning storm.

"We need you to destroy as many of the ships as you can before nightfall," Shino said.

Katashi sloshed out of the water, his sodden pants clinging to his legs. "They were going to land after sunset, anyway; try and get in under cover of darkness."

"You're g- g- going to n- need to hurry," Hinata said, her face drawn and pale in the dirty light. "The sun's setting fast."

"I can handle it. It'll drain all my chakra, but you guys can handle the ones that escape," Katashi scoffed, waving away her concerns as he grinned at them, all teeth and wildness and anticipation. "I'll only have a problem if the Isonade doesn't cooperate, but that probably won't happen."

Naruto glanced at Kiba, whose expression showed his opinion of entrusting their lives to a 'probably', before he clapped a hand on Katashi's shoulder and leaned in, smelling sea-salt and sweat as he whispered into his ear, "If the Isonade refuses to give you enough help, tell it this:

These are the ones who killed you."

He stepped back, glanced out at the waves as Katashi squinted at him.

"What's that have to do with anything?"

"Just-" he blew out a sigh, raked his fingers through his hair. "Just use it if you have to, okay? I can't promise it'll work, but it should help."

"Whatever you say," Katashi said, turning away to start stripping, wrestling his shirt off over his head and yanking his pants off, his ragged shorts flapping in the chill wind. The black seal of waves spanned skinny shoulders, rippled over protruding shoulderblades.

Naruto reached out and grabbed him around the shoulders, bestowing a one-armed hug. "See you when you get back."

Katashi nodded, then tore himself free and ran into a sea that parted to welcome him home.

"How'll we know when he's transformed?" Hinata asked.

"Trust me: you'll know," Naruto said, watching as Katashi's dark shape moved further and further away from him into the darkness of the sea and the war, until he disappeared into blackness, waves rippling on the surface with each stroke of his webbed hands.

The ocean calmed, flattened, became a mirror reflecting the dimming gray sky, an expanse of silver metal. Waves subsided into nothing.

Silence reigned, broken only by the soft sighing of wind, as if the world was new.

And everything was still.

No one spoke, afraid to disturb the unnatural silence.

Naruto's fingers curled tighter around the hilt of his tanto, his mouth dry as stone, every muscle hard with tension, with waiting. Akamaru leaned into the wind, sniffed, Kiba's fingers curled in his ruff.

Then the sea exploded.

Water rose in a towering cyclone, a blue pillar of fear, and something primeval emerged from the depths, three tails parting the water, fins and hooked horn piercing the sky like blades.

The Isonade, blue-black as night, fifty feet long, rolled in the water, its fathomless eyes darker than space, chakra that smelled of darkness and felt to Naruto's senses like the crushing pressure of the depths whipping in harsh torrents over the surface of the ocean. Its mouth opened, bloody-toothed and crushing, large enough to swallow a human whole.

It made no noise, gave no sign of humanity, and Naruto stared into its black eyes but did not search for his brother.

"Is that him?" Kiba whispered.

Naruto nodded slowly as the beast sank once more, the sea returning to its natural state, the cyclone bursting into salty rain.

Drops landed on his face.

He licked at them and they tasted like tears.

* * *

Masaru's toes curled around the rigging as he strained to see the rocky beach, their landing site hidden from view by distance and the fading light.

"Fuck it," he muttered, springing back off the ropes and landing on the deck, the ship rolling beneath him. "Hey, Shinji, run and tell the captain that I can't see it so he'll let me borrow his spyglass." Shinji loped down the deck to go grab the spyglass, while Masaru jammed his thumbs in the loops of his shorts and squinted out at the other ships surrounding him.

The other shinobi manning the sides didn't even look up as Shinji passed by, too busy with cleaning their swords, sharpening their spears, yanking on tattered leather armor to test the strength. One woman muttered a curse as her leather tunic came apart in her hands, rotted from the salt and wind.

The four sails flapped in the breeze, the sound like the bones of a fish crunching between teeth.

The war should be easy, maybe three months, tops. It wasn't like Konoha had any sort of chance at all, considering the other Great Villages were all united against them.

And the war would be good, an easy victory to give Kiri back the pride that Kumo stole when they struck down the Mizukage and ground Kiri into the dust with their numbers, when they forbade the festivals and the language of the islands, when they took away everything that was the Kiri of his childhood.

A ripple passed through the people on the left side, the shinobi standing up, shading their eyes and leaning out over the railings.

"Do you see that?" Hibiki said, his eyes wide.

"See what?"

"That- that big black shadow. It was there for a second, then it disappeared." Masaru joined them, frowning.

"What's going on?"

"Hibiki said he saw something. You been drinking too much sake, Hibiki?" one of the shinobi jeered.

Hibiki snarled at him, wheeling on the deck and pointing out beyond the bow of the _Youta._

"I swear it was there- thirty, maybe forty feet long."

"Could be a whale," the woman with the torn tunic suggested, sounding pleased to have something that wasn't her tunic to focus on.

"Whales don't-"

The shinobi on the _Youta_ began to scream, the clarity of their shouts torn by the wind, but Masaru saw Hibiki's face go as white as seafoam, his mouth half-open as he blinked, seeming unable to believe what he was hearing.

There was a noose around Masaru's neck, and he felt it tighten.

"Hibiki? Hibiki, what are they saying?"

Hibiki's whisper sounded like the last breath of a dying man. "They're saying 'Isonade.'"

Shinji skidded to a stop beside Masaru, the spyglass falling from his hand as he heard Hibiki, the instrument shattering apart into shards of glass that sparkled like fallen stars.

"The Isonade? It can't be here, come on- Katashi can't- why would they fight for Konoha? Come on!" He glanced back and forth between them, skinny fists clenched, practically vibrating, casting fearful glances at the _Youta_ as the crewmembers began to run for their weapons, several pointing at the water. "It can't be here. Right?"

The sea answered the boy's question with a roar, the _Youta_ leaping in the air as something hit it from below, a horn- an all-too-recognizable scythe- tearing through the bottom of the hull, ripping a giant hole. The crew screamed, two flying through the air, arms and legs windmilling, only to hit the ocean with deadening thuds.

The horn withdrew, water flooding the bottom of the _Youta_. The beast struck once more, piercing the side and pulling upwards, rolling the doomed ship upside-down. Then it reared up from the water, black eyes- he remembered those eyes, remembered the way they gleamed with insane joy as the ocean crashed down over the mesa and swept most of the population of his village into the sea- dead as the water came up over the _Youta_ and swallowed it whole.

Paralyzed, he watched the shape of the _Youta_ disappear into the blackness of the depths to be crushed into matchwood, its crew into rags of flesh.

The entire attack had taken less than a minute.

"Get the bows and arrows! Get the spears!" he roared. The crew scrambled for their weapons as the Isonade dove, the beast disappearing beneath the waves. Masaru grabbed his spear and joined the captain at the stern.

"We need to evacuate the other ships!"

The captain's hands were shaking on the wheel. "We can't- all of our ships are full. Adding more shinobi will just make us go below the waterline. I tried to tell the Mizukage that we shouldn't load the ships so much, but he didn't-"

The Isonade leaped into the air beside the _Kaede,_ dark eyes rolling as it came down on the _Ran_.

The small ship shattered apart beneath its weight, the demon smashing through the deck and hull straight into the water below, the crew sliding into the water, several unlucky ones crushed into pulp beneath the Isonade's bulk. The bow and stern turned up, slanted like mountains before the ocean opened to pull them down like the others.

The shark returned, rammed the _Kiku_. The two masts splintered apart as the ship rolled onto its side, water flooding the deck.

"Ropes!" Masaru screamed as the few escapees of the _Kiku_ ran towards the _Kaede_. The crew tumbled ropes over the sides, the escapees grabbing onto them-

The Isonade came up from below, its mouth a giant dark hole rimmed with bloody teeth, one woman screaming as the teeth closed around her belly and ripped her in two.

"Pull!" someone howled, the _Kiku_'s crewmembers plastering their feet with chakra and running up the side of the ship in an attempt to escape the Isonade.

But the ocean rose in great tendrils, coiled around their waists and yanked them back into the embrace of the sea, pulling the hapless people who had been holding the other end of the ropes in with them.

"Katashi!" Shinji screamed, leaning over the railing, his face contorted with rage. The Isonade surfaced, rolled onto its side to meet his eyes.

He could see hatred there.

"Shinji!" he yelled across the deck, scrambling to get across, to grab him, to throw him below. "Shut up! For God's sake, shut _up!_"

But Shinji shrieked into the wind, "You know Rei? You know what happened to her bones?" Someone lunged for him, but Shinji sidestepped.

The Isonade was utterly still, the sea flattening out into a mirror. Blood stained it black, planks of wood floating, a few shinobi clinging to them.

Shinji's lips peeled back in an inhuman snarl, "We dug up her bones and threw them into the sea! She didn't deserve to have a grave-"

Hibiki, taking advantage of the Isonade's distraction, hurled a spear. A whip of water lashed up and broke the spear in two, then the other spears that the crew from the other ships flung. Someone hurled a water jutsu, and the Isonade ignored it and the thirty paltry attacks that followed it, dismissing them with a flick of its tails.

'_If only_,' Masaru thought with a sudden clarity that only death could bring, '_we hadn't destroyed the Clans. If only we knew something other than water jutsus. If only we weren't so arrogant to think that the sea could provide everything. If only._'

"-and now she'll never have one, all because of _you_!" Shinji finished, his grin psychopathic with glee.

The Isonade's mouth opened in a silent scream of rage, the demon twisting and diving with a flick of its three tails. Masaru saw the crew on the other ships shimmy down ropes and start to sprint for the shoreline, the water splashing up in their wake.

Even if they made it, they'd lost their supplies.

Spray flecked his face as he leaned over the edge, searching for the beast below.

It must have gone too deep-

The Isonade breached the surface, almost flew, spitting a stream of water that crashed straight through three of the smallest ships. Boards and barrels flew into the sky, dark blots against the setting sun, then landed, splintering apart.

There was nothing for them to do.

But they were shinobi of Kiri, and they pressed on, throwing spear after spear, jutsu after jutsu, if only to give the people fleeing over the waves the best chance they could.

A few spears broke the chakra barrier, sticking in the paler belly. The beast's mouth opened in a silent roar as it twisted in the air, trying to get its softer underside out of the line of fire.

Hope swelled in Masaru's chest, even as his shoulder began to cramp, his fingers to shake with cold and fear as he tried to perform a jutsu. "It's beginning to weaken! Keep going!"

The beast crashed down atop the _Aoi_, pushing it down into the water for the ocean to swallow up, drag down to the bottom to crush, to leave the crew as food for the fish, before wriggling off the deck, its tails smacking the people that rushed it into the water, churning with blood and boards.

The remaining five ships began to evacuate as well, the shinobi's faces white as they stepped onto the water, testing it, before they all hitched their packs up and began to sprint over the waves towards shore. The Isonade twisted in the water, almost grinning, and snapped up three of them, shaking its head once, wet chunks of flesh sailing through the air, splattering blood across the deck, flecking Masaru's face. Shinji used a Kokuun jutsu, a cloud of water expelling black oil onto the Isonade, the oil slick around the creature a greasy rainbow cloud, the oil spattering across the side of the _Kaede_.

Hibiki ran to grab the lamp by the captain and sheltered it against the wind with his own body as he rejoined Masaru.

People were still grimly attacking, hurling weapons and jutsus even as the Isonade seemed to leer contemptuously at them.

Katashi had done that- had grinned as the boys tried to drown him over and over, even as the beast that lived within him prevented his death.

"Aim for its eyes!" Masaru cried.

Hibiki leaped overboard, his clothes flapping in the wind, balanced on the waves, and held the lamp up high.

"Hibiki! Goddamnit, what are you _doing?_ Get up here!"

Hibiki didn't turn to him, his gaze focused completely on the Isonade, which raised its head above the water as if in curiosity.

"You killed my mother," Hibiki whispered, his words almost lost beneath the crashing of waves and the screaming of shinobi.

Someone flung a spear, and as the Isonade turned to deflect it, Hibiki hurled the lamp. It shattered just above the Isonade's eye, and the oil burst into flame.

The beast reared like an enraged horse as the fire raced orange-red like the setting sun around its eye, mouth opening like a great cave, before it dove, then leaped from the water once more, swallowing Hibiki up even as he looked up to Masaru and smiled.

Only his hand, pale, blood-smeared, remained outside the gaping jaws. It stiffened, curled into a fist, and then fell limp, disappearing between the teeth.

"Hibiki!" Masaru screamed even as he knew it was useless, that his friend was gone.

The Isonade circled the remaining ships, seeming to plot the best way to attack, even as black blood streamed from its eye, shards of glass embedded in the burnt flesh. The ocean slapped against the side of the ship, trying to overturn the _Kaede_ as it had the _Youta_, but the _Kaede _was too heavy to do so.

Spears rained down upon the demon, piercing the chakra barrier and sticking in the sandpapered skin, black blood springing from the wounds and boiling the sea where it hit, the spears swaying back and forth like a macabre forest. The Isonade rolled, bleeding eye fixed on them, promising vengeance, before it sank into the depths.

Demonic chakra hummed in the air, a harsh cacophony that made his teeth rattle in their sockets, as Masaru stared out at the shore, shrouded in darkness.

A shoreline he would never step foot on.

But the others had, and that was enough.

"It's going to come back, isn't it?" Shinji said from beside him, vomit spattered across his shirt and chin.

Masaru turned to see his eyes, red-rimmed with tears, and squeezed his shoulder, seeing that he was young.

Heartbreakingly young.

"We'll be remembered," he said quietly, in a vain attempt to appeal to the idea of glory and honor forever.

Shinji's mouth twisted in a smile bitter as wormwood. "Yeah. We'll be remembered, all right.

As part of the biggest failure in Kiri's history."

* * *

_Katashi found himself standing before a pane of glass, the seal of the Mizukage a white blot against the translucent material, his hand pressed to his left eye even as blood poured out from between his fingers._

_The Isonade made its slow circuit behind the glass, endless circles, curling in on itself like the spiral in a seashell, three tails drifting side-to-side, the current carrying it along, a shadow against the gloom. Black eyes rolled in its head._

_::Boy,:: it said in a voice of crashing waves and churning currents, ::why do you seek more from me?::_

"_Because it's not enough! I can't get those big ships with what little you're giving me!"_

_The Isonade, for the first time in fifteen long years, left its path, slipping through the water to hover behind the glass, its eyes impassive, its teeth white and gleaming, its sheer _presence_ beating against the glass, against Katashi's palms._

_::You think what I have given you is little?::_ _There was nothing in its voice. ::Power over the sea, a compass to rival the North Star, chakra that can tear three jounin to shreds? You would call these boons small?::_

"_If they don't do what I want them to do, then yeah, I'll call them little! I need more!"_

_Black eyes flickered as the Isonade's tails stilled. ::Perhaps what I have given you is all that I have to give.::_

_He slammed his fist against the glass. "God damn it, that's not all! I know it's not all, because if it was all I'd be dead! They desecrated Rei's remains, and I'm going to make them pay!"_

_::You think I am the Kyuubi, with infinite chakra to give?::_

_Katashi stepped back, folding his arms across his chest. "No. I know you're not the Kyuubi, although sometimes I wish you were."_

_::If I were to give you more, there would be only enough chakra left to sustain myself and you. So I refuse.:: The beast turned away, about to resume its course._

_Katashi blew out a frustrated breath, shifting from foot to foot, before he lunged for the glass, plastering himself against it, the cold seeping into his skin, cold like the bottom of a trench._

"_These people of Kiri," he said slowly and distinctly, "are the ones who killed you."_

_The Isonade paused, and for a moment he saw a small shark beside it, floating in a billow of red blood, fins and tail lopped off- a shadow, or an echo._

_It turned, its eyes- if it were possible- even colder. _

_::The people around us now?::_

'_Gotcha.'_

_He did not smile. "Yeah. Them."_

_Teeth shone white in the shadows. ::Then let me through. Let me through, and I will give you all you need. Let me through-_

_And we shall show them what it means to drown.::_

_Katashi smiled, the glass suddenly yielding beneath his hands, and stepped into the shadow._

The ocean opened.

And suddenly there was no water beneath the ships, and in silence they plummeted through open air to the bottom, sails flapping in the wind, the shinobi on the rigging screaming, clinging tight as if to save themselves-

Wood splintered apart, exploded into shards as the ships hit the stone of the seafloor, people thrown from them, skidding across the ground, skin tearing off, bloody smears painting the gray plain, barrels and bodies strewn across the expanse. Fish flopped upon the ground, unblinking eyes seeing the sun for the first time.

And the sea roared as it escaped its boundaries, came crashing back upon the scene, buried the ships and the shinobi and the pride of Kiri beneath two thousand feet of sea, the churning flood howling with all the fury of the Isonade.

* * *

"Here they come," Kiba said. "I smell them."

"How far out and how many?" Naruto asked.

Kiba inhaled, closing his eyes. "About a mile. There's around three hundred of them, I think. Hard to tell, really- they all stink of fear."

"Wouldn't you, after seeing… that?" Shino said.

Kiba grunted vague agreement.

Naruto nodded, dropping into a crouch and placing his hands on the gravel. He felt for the earth beneath as he stared out at the roiling ocean, seeing the dark specks of shinobi moving closer over the waves, away from the terrible whirlpool behind them.

It was waterlogged already- perfect.

The gravel in front of where he stood turned into an expanse of mud, dark-brown and slick, becoming muddy water as it met the shoreline.

He could hear screaming in the darkness ahead, and took a deep breath as he pushed more chakra into the mud, pulling his hands back and forming seals, whispering, "Doryuudan."

Something stirred within the mud, spikes rising like mountains made of needles from the pond, followed by a serpentine head, eyes gleaming dim brown. The earth dragon towered above them all, its eyes fixed on the people running over the ocean.

Mud plopped onto the ground from its maw in an unnerving imitation of drool.

Naruto reached out with his senses, feeling the chakra signatures incoming.

"Two hundred feet," he muttered, reaching for his tanto and covering it with wind chakra, extending it past the blade, an invisible danger that no one would see unless they looked for it.

Hinata sank into the Juuken stance, her eyes white in the gathering gloom.

Kikai whirled out of Shino and up into the sky, a dark cloud heralding death, Shino's eyes gleaming darkly behind his glasses.

"One-seventy-five."

Kiba uncorked a small vial, a smell like rotting bodies permeating the air. Naruto's stomach disagreed violently with its presence, but he swallowed it down and crouched, tanto at the ready, Katashi's sword slung across his back.

His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth, and it was as if a steel band had been wrapped around his chest and was slowly tightening, as if gravity had grown stronger and was pressing him down into the earth.

The shinobi running at them burst into clarity, a few almost skidding to a stop on the waves before they kept going, unsheathing swords, their chests heaving.

The dragon began to spit mudballs, catching several of them in the face and toppling them back into the water.

One of the jounin opened his mouth and spat a wave of water, boiling-hot, sizzling as it raced over the waves toward them-

'_Shit-_' Naruto slammed his palm onto the ground and shoved chakra in, creating a haphazard wall of earth between his team and the onslaught. As soon as the wall erupted, he leaped onto the top, summoning clones and flinging kunai into their hands, the clones coating the kunai with wind chakra and taking off, racing on either side of the battalion.

The kunai didn't touch the Kiri-nin.

They didn't need to- the long blades of chakra did the work for them.

The water was dyed red with blood and bile as viscera plopped into the ocean like macabre stones, dragging the gashed-open shinobi in with them.

Kiba flung the pungent liquid out in front of him, spattering the enemy, before he joined Akamaru, his dog taking his form, the two of them crouching on the gravel, ready, low, twin growls rumbling from identical throats.

The first Kiri-nin's foot hit land. Naruto leaped from the wall, noting distantly that his clones had been destroyed, into the fray, twisting into a kick, before letting a bolt of lightning fly from his fingers, splitting out to arc from shinobi to shinobi, water boiling off their skin, the smell like cooked meat.

He would have vomited if he had the breath.

Hinata launched into a Sixty-Four Palms, limbs moving as if they were water, every motion fast, smooth, and utterly practiced, beautiful in their simplicity. One of the attacking Kiri-nins was bisected straight down the middle, the others backpedaling. It would have been comical, if they didn't move straight into Kiba and Akamaru's attacks.

Claws tore through leather and skin, Kiba's arm sinking straight through a girl's belly, before he ripped himself free, his arm dyed red with blood.

Most of the Kiri shinobi swerved, leaped out of the way of their attacks, sprinting for the forest, seeming to Naruto's senses like flickering candles, their chakras drained almost to nothing by their headlong rush across the waves.

Shino's kikai came together into a black cloud, diving, the shinobi screaming in horror as the kikai tore what little chakra they had remaining away from them, stumbling, falling, sobbing as the life drained from them, the kikai enraged by the lack of chakra to feast on.

Blood spattered across Naruto's face, and he shook his head like a beast, trying to fling it out of his eyes. His gore-soaked hair smacked against his skin, even as he whirled and flung a kunai. It sank into a man's throat with a squelch, red-black blood pouring in a waterfall from the gaping hole. The man's head fell back, too far to be natural, to the white rings of his spine in the darkness for a second before the corpse toppled over.

Another shinobi attacked while he was distracted, sword slicing across his thigh, ripping the muscle and tendon. Agony lanced white-hot into his spine, rose up it like a knife dragging up the spinal cord, burst in black clouds behind his eyes as he threw himself back. Blood fountained from his wound as he fell to one knee, rolled, gravel digging into his skin and adding more pain to his burdened body, tanto falling from nerveless fingers.

Hinata came to his rescue, touching the back of the man's head with her fingers. His eyes clouded over, black as night as blood filled them, before he spat blood-tinged phlegm and fell to the ground.

Naruto couldn't stop the scream of agony from breaking free, but he slammed his hands together into a seal and summoned shadow clones, these laced with unstable demonic chakra. The clones dispersed, each running after a Kiri-nin, reaching for them-

Exploding in crimson fireballs, the fiery chakra of the Kyuubi melted the flesh off the shinobi's bones, boiled the sea into foul-smelling steam, and left charred skeletons crumbling to the earth.

He rolled onto his front and pushed himself up, the Kyuubi's chakra knitting together the wound. It held when he stood on it, although he'd need to-

There! Katashi was dragging himself out of the water, his face white with exhaustion, a gaping wound in his belly streaming blood, but he scrambled out of the way into the outcropping of boulders, leaving the others to finish his work.

A two-headed, white wolf- Kiba and Akamaru, merged as one- roared and struck out with claw and fang. It crushed a woman's head beneath its paws before spinning like a white cyclone across the beach, slashing apart shinobi in the wake of its passing.

A man was flung against the rock outcropping. His head broke open like an egg, brain matter spattering the gray stone, but he-

He wasn't _dead_, and it was so sick to watch the way his chest rose and fell, struggling for life. Naruto spat on the ground, his heart slamming against the inside of his chest- no air, no air to breathe, no air to scream with, no air to give voice to the _sickness_ of it all-

Screaming filled the air, high, thin sounds, ragged with agony, a girl no older than Konohamaru would be now dragging herself up the beach, the entire right side of her body charred, flesh falling off with every movement, and she was screaming for her parents, for someone- _anyone_- to help her because she'd gotten caught in one of his shadow clone's explosions, and he had-

He had just killed a child and the guilt burrowed into his soul with black claws.

Kiba and Akamaru broke apart, drained of chakra, but that was okay, that was fine, because most of the Kiri-nin were gone already, slipped away. Kiba caught himself on one hand, scrambled upright, and looked around.

Shino was broken and bloodied on the ground, his arm bent beneath him in a way that no human arm should do. Pink-tinged bone thrust from the skin into the air like the head of a spear.

"Retreat!" Kiba yelled, and Naruto whirled, hurried to the rocks, found Katashi sprawled loose-limbed, chest shuddering as he tried to breathe.

Bile rose in his throat as he saw-

The entire area on the left side of his face around his eye was a burned ruin, black and peeling, spanned with red tributaries, blood mixed with water smeared over his closed eyelid, the Isonade's blue-black chakra flickering, dim as a dying star, over the wound.

He couldn't fix this-

His brother might be blind, might be crippled, might _die_, because of him, because of his village-

He scooped him up in his arms, flung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and sprinted after Kiba and the others, Shino draped over Akamaru's back as the dog limped on three legs, casting a glance over his back-

Good, the Kiri-nin weren't interested in following them, just in fleeing into the forest to regroup. Not that that would save them, when they had orders to wipe them all out.

And the skyline was on fire as the last hint of the sun cast bloody-red light over everything-

His shirt was drenched with sweat and blood.

There was water streaming down his face- sea water, had to be, because it was salty and warm and almost like blood.

And in the distance a child was screaming for his mother, and Naruto looked and saw that it was a boy even younger than Katashi, whose guts were sitting in his hands like a macabre offering, and he turned away and ran on, and every breath he took was a prayer-

'_God. God, I am too young for this._

_God, let me go home._'

But God didn't answer.

They sprinted on up over the beach, gravel rolling beneath their feet, across the scrubland into the welcoming darkness of the trees, a thin whine escaping Akamaru with every step. His leg burned like someone had cut open his bones and replaced the marrow with coals, his heart hammering in his chest.

"Guys," Hinata whispered from a dry throat as they entered the forest, "do you see them?"

Naruto skidded to a stop.

Black cloth, emblazoned with crimson clouds, waved in the gloom beneath the branches, pale eyes pinning them in place.

'_It's them._' Weariness unfurled in him, dragging him down as if someone had strapped leaden weights to every inch of skin. He let Katashi slide off his shoulder, holding him up with an arm around his shoulders.

A silver-haired man- Hidan, the devotee of Jashin- leaned on his scythe as his partner, Kazuku, glared at them through goggles.

Kiba tried to straighten, but he was so drained from the Garouga that he stumbled forward, only Hinata's arm at his elbow kept him from falling flat on his face. Akamaru glared at them, one leg curled protectively underneath him, teeth glittering white in the dimness.

"Who're you?" Kiba snarled, struggling upright, teeth bared, blood streaking his face, making him look like a werewolf, some ancient spirit of the forest.

"Nobody of consequence," Kazuku said, his voice a deep baritone. "To you, at least." Black threads slithered beneath his skin, disgusting serpents.

Katashi's working eye rolled to focus on the Akatsuki members, his muscles tensing beneath Naruto's arm, a harsh sob of exhaustion whistling from between windburned lips. Naruto dropped his shoulder and ducked his head, letting Katashi's sword slide off his back into his brother's grip.

"To those dickweeds-" Hidan jerked his head at where he and Katashi stood, his scythe clanking with the movement, "-we're rather more dangerous."

"Naruto," Hinata whispered, settling down into her stance, "what do we need to do?"

He swallowed past the lump in his throat and the slowly building fury scalding his lungs as he met Hidan's eyes, the eyes of a man who wanted to kill them for no reason than that his psychopathic god demanded he do so.

"Run."

* * *

**A/N**: Hope you enjoyed it! All comments and criticism are loved, and don't forget to check out the amazing fanart linked in my profile!


	29. Chapter 29

**A/N:** I received more wonderful fanart! An awesome picture of Noboru in full-fledged Butcher of Kusu mode, and another great picture of Katashi from the last chapter, both by the lovely Amsuhl. Go worship. I also got a great picture of Naruto from the amazing RaRaMuffin! Make sure to go check them both out! I hope you enjoy the chapter, and sorry for the delay in getting it out. I hope the length makes up for it.

* * *

_My youngest son came home today  
His friends marched with him all the way  
The fife and drum beat out the time  
While in his box of polished pine  
Like dead meat on a butcher's tray  
My youngest son came home today._  
- 'My Youngest Son Came Home Today' by Eric Bogle

* * *

"But-" Kiba began, only to fall silent as Hinata began to drag him away from the confrontation, Akamaru limping beside them.

"I'll come and find you," Hinata called over her shoulder, before turning and speeding up her retreat, leaving the jinchuuriki and the Akatsuki to stare at each other in the silence.

The light of the burning ships poured over the horizon, lighting the forest with the dim red of a dying ember. Katashi blinked, the expanding black cloud over the entire left side of his field of vision chilling him to the bone. Even the simple motion of blinking was agony, pulling on burned flesh. But he could see Kakuzu and Hidan out of his right eye, and that was more than enough to see the terrible grin on Hidan's face.

He tried to get his feet under him, to stand, Naruto's arm slackening around his waist. Why now, of all times, did they have to show up? Why now, when one eye was injured- he refused to think that he might lose it- and he had no chakra? The universe hated him, he concluded bitterly even as he straightened and curled aching fingers around the hilt of his sword.

He felt Naruto's fingers dig into his side in silent comfort, even though his brother didn't look away from the Akatsuki once.

"Come _on_," Hidan jabbed the end of his scythe into the dirt, "this is the best you have to offer? Some half-dead pipsqueak? That's not a challenge; hell, that's not even a fucking warmup!"

Katashi felt Naruto's fingers on his side move, scrawling out something through the thick cloth of his flak jacket, shook his head enough to clear his pain-fogged brain and focus on what Naruto was telling him.

_Can._

_You._

_Run? _

He didn't _want _to- it was hard enough just to hold himself up on shaking legs, the muscles feeling like they were on fire with exhaustion- but he could.

He inclined his head.

With a 'pop!' the forest was suddenly filled with clones, and the breath was shoved out of his lungs as Naruto yanked him backward and started to sprint for the cliffs, Naruto's breath a harsh, hot sound in his ear as he tried to synchronize his movements with his, to help propel them along, the branches tearing at their clothing as they hurtled through the dark forest, the sounds of the clones popping out of existence a constant counterpoint to their heaving breaths.

"Don't have much time," Naruto panted as he burst out onto the cliffs, moonlight pouring down over them in a wash of silver, "and I dunno if I can get both of them at once-"

"I can get Hidan."

Naruto skidded to a stop and loosened his grip, Katashi stumbling forward- his legs weren't _working_-, only prevented from toppling over completely by Naruto's hand on the back of his jacket.

"You can't even stand up!"

Branches broke in the forest as the Akatsuki emerged, Hidan wiping off his hand on his cloak. "Well, that was fucking pointless," the man grumbled. Apparently he did most of the talking; Kakuzu seemed almost mute.

"I can do it," Katashi said, hauling himself upright, covering his groan with a cough. Hidan circled them as Katashi twisted to follow his movement with his deteriorating eyesight, the Akatsuki member pausing at the edge of the cliff and launching into some weird… ritual that involved drawing a triangle on the ground.

"Come on, Hidan," Kakuzu said, "he's just one kid. Do you really have to-"

"Shut up, asshole," Hidan interrupted.

Kakuzu took a threatening step forward. Fear shuddered up Katashi's spine, and he inhaled. "Get him away, and I'll deal with Hidan."

There was a disgusted snort from the older man behind them, his opinion on Katashi's ability to 'deal with him' very clear.

Naruto's glance was despairing, his brother's face pale and twisted with feeling. "You can't handle this, you know?"

"Yes, I can!" Katashi said. He had to be brave, had to make Naruto believe that he could do it. "I'll probably take him out all on my own."

Naruto's smile was faltering, his expression dubious, but he only said, "Sure." In a burst of motion, he sped forward and dodged Kakuzu's strange black threads, heading for the forest. Kakuzu gave Katashi a contemptuous glance and sardonic wave, the other Akatsuki member whirling around to sprint after Naruto. Katashi watched him go, his brother a black shape against the trees, before turning back to meet Hidan's pale, mocking gaze.

"Looks like it's just you and me, kid."

Some sort of strange black ink was spreading beneath his skin like a giant bruise, great blotches of darkness appearing, ending cleanly at the edges, as if somebody had cut the white shapes within the blackness out with a knife. The white curves and lines almost resembled a skeleton.

"Cool trick," he said, before shifting his grip on his katana and lunging, twisting out of the way as the scythe slashed the air beside him, the three blades humming as they passed. He followed through, the sword coming around and ripping through the first layer of the robe, the blade coming out into air without a single drop of blood on it.

Damn it.

He was just being _toyed_ with.

He dropped once more, kicked out even as the gash on his side pulled open, the blood thundering in his ears. Hidan leaped over his kick- Katashi flipped back, skidded to a stop in the mud- and slashed his scythe across the sword, the heavy blades crashing into the wide side of the katana.

The sword shook once in his hand, a thin, high clink resounding through the air. Katashi jerked, the entire upper half of the blade speeding by his face in a flash of silver light, leaving a whisper of wind in its passing. He twisted in time to see it land in the mud, a shining light surrounded by darkness.

Shit. Yugito was going to be so mad at him for getting her old sword broken.

Okay- no chakra left for jutsus, so what did he have?

No kunai.

No senbon.

A broken sword.

Fucking great.

He charged, but Hidan simply sidestepped, elbow crashing down on the back of Katashi's neck, a hacking cough exploding out of his mouth. His head flew back, a dull, leaden weight spreading through his limbs as he crashed into the mud.

Goddamnit it, why wouldn't they _work?_

"Just let me get a little of your blood, here…" Hidan said, planting his foot on Katashi's back and digging his heel into the open wound in his side, making him grunt. Hidan's fingers scraped cold and revolting along the back of his neck.

God, the guy was stupid- you weren't supposed to play with your opponents. Although- the knowledge was bitter on his tongue- it wasn't like he presented much of a challenge.

The mud oozed over his limbs, soaked through his flak jacket as he tried to turn over and succeeded in only smearing more dirt over himself, his limbs reduced to heavy lumps of stone.

Straining, he lifted his head. Feeling returned, and he reversed his grip on his sword and stabbed blindly upward, feeling the jagged edge sink into flesh.

"Fuck!" Hidan screeched, drawing back his foot and kicking Katashi in the belly. Red spots flashed before his eyes as he flew back, hit the mud with a deadened squelch, and skidded, clods of dirt invading his mouth.

He spat, then gasped as pain radiated up his leg.

He hadn't been cut, but a bloody tear in his flesh still snaked up the inside of his thigh, mirroring the gash cut into Hidan's trousers.

"Looks like you've discovered your dilemma," Hidan said, winking as Katashi raised his head. "You try and cut me, you cut yourself." He snickered, an ugly sound like nails scraping on a chalkboard. "So you might as well just give up."

Katashi struggled to his feet and spat. "I'm not the giving up type, so you can just go fuck yourself." He planted his feet, cold water and mud oozing over the tops of his sandals.

"What a novel insult," Hidan said, his eyes bright within the darkness of his face, as he hefted his scythe, reversed it, and stabbed it towards his own chest-

Katashi lunged, broken sword whistling through the air, a hopeless, mad dash that could accomplish nothing, but he had to do _something_, not just stand and wait to die-

Hidan's scythe ripped through his chest.

A scream erupted from Katashi's throat, strangled and dying halfway as his own torso suddenly caved in, bones grinding against each other, sternum cracking apart. He glanced down at the gaping wound and gagged, the blue-red shadows of his own _lungs- _dear God he wasn't supposed to see his own lungs- shuddering with every breath.

All his strength slipped away, and he staggered and fell to his knees, sword dropping from nerveless fingers, hacking into the mud as his fingers spasmed, curled so tightly against his palms that blood sprang, muscle control ripped from him by the agony, his legs shuddering, jerking as hot blood pumped black-red.

This wasn't supposed to happen. He was supposed to destroy the fleet and go home, and Noboru would ruffle his hair and say 'good job', and he'd find another carving from Varg as a gift.

He dragged his eyes away from the terrible dark stain creeping across his flak jacket, glared at the smug man standing on the edge of the cliff, his lips twisted in a smile even as blood puddled on the ground around him.

"_Hate_ you," he rasped. Hated this cruel, fanatical bastard who didn't seem to have a plan or a motive for anything he did other than the fact that he wanted to see something hurt, something bleed.

He hadn't known the meaning of hatred before- thought he had hated Kiri, but even that slow burn in his gut was nothing compared to the raging firestorm inside him that galvanized him, forced him to suck in a breath- '_don't look down, don't'_ – and inch his knees beneath him, every shuddering motion of muscles seeming to take an age.

The Isonade's chakra wound blue-black over the gash, skin forming slowly. He felt the chakra surround the splinters floating around the cavity, preventing them from driving into his heart or lungs.

That was good, but he didn't have much chakra left; just enough to keep himself alive.

Lightning lanced white-hot through him and burned up his spine as his arms moved, and bone ground against bone as he slowly pushed his torso upright, kneeling back on his haunches.

"You know you're just screwing yourself," Hidan said, scratching at his chin, completely unconcerned with the canyon in his chest. "You might as well just stay down."

He blinked away involuntary tears and placed one hand in the mud behind him, the sodden earth almost swallowing his fingers, and inched his way upright, tiny, harsh gasps jerking out of him with every motion, his breathing erratic no matter how hard he tried to steady it, to count ten seconds between breaths.

No.

He wouldn't _stay_ _down_, because he was a shinobi, not a beast as the people of Kiri had said, and men didn't just _stay down_.

He would meet what came upright, as a man, not a beast.

"Huh," said Hidan, looking him up and down. "I'm surprised you made it. What do you want, a fucking cookie?"

"_Fuck_ you," he snarled, swaying, glancing down at the gash, blinking, swallowing as the black stain on his jacket spread wider and wider, ink racing through paper.

The wound was deep and wide, and fucking painful, but Hidan seemed to have deliberately missed puncturing his lungs or heart-

The wound wasn't big enough or deep enough to kill him as long as the Isonade kept working on it, only incapacitate him and keep the Isonade occupied.

Something niggled at the outside of his thoughts, because somehow this didn't make sense. Somehow the fact that Hidan was leaving him alive-

Crimson beads glinted around Hidan's wrist, red-silver in the rising moon's light.

Wait. The beads, they had to do with that batshit death cult Yugito mentioned, the one that tried to recruit her, that had the crazy name-

Jashin!

"Tell me something about this Jashin." His voice was unrecognizable, thick and bubbly with blood, but it seemed to get the message across, and that was all that mattered. Blood smeared over his fingers as he spoke, the pressure somehow easing the acid pain snaking through him. "What's he the god of?"

Hidan stopped shifting from side to side in his triangle drawing, cocking his head. "'What's he the god of?' Destruction, you little ass! Your life will be the next sacrifice to my god, after we're done with you."

Katashi frowned, thoughts drifting through his dazed mind. They needed him alive for the moment, and Yugito had mentioned something about how Jashin cultists weren't supposed to leave anything alive, so keeping Katashi alive-

It had to be important.

If Akatsuki needed all of the jinchuuriki _alive_ to do whatever it was they wanted to do, then if Katashi-

He swallowed.

If he _died_, then Akatsuki couldn't use his bijuu, wouldn't have a reason to hunt down the others.

If he died, they would be safe.

And if he used up all of his chakra, then he could kill Hidan, could drag him into the depths and let the ocean destroy him.

But-

He didn't want to die- he was only fifteen, and he'd never been the smartest of the jinchuuriki, but he knew that fifteen years was not long enough.

Not long enough to see the future, not long enough to ever do and see and say all that he wanted to.

Not long enough to see Shinobu marry Shino, or fall in love himself. Not long enough to see Moriko perform her first real jutsu, or come up with his own. Not long enough to finally beat Yugito.

Not long enough.

It could never be long enough, not for him, not for somebody who had spent most of their life being hated, being blamed, for everything, who had never had a real life, not really.

But-

He was going to die either way, so he either died a hero now or a coward who gave in to fear, his bijuu used for the Akatsuki's plan.

And Rei had never given up.

Even in giving up her sword, she had stood strong.

Tears stung in his working eye, sent hot licks of flame over his skin as they rolled over cracked and bleeding burns.

'_It will be worth it._'

His arms felt like stone as he slowly brought them together, drying blood rasping against his skin as he bit his lip against the pain of lacerated fingers forcing themselves through seals. The skin on his upper black flared to white-hot agony as if someone was dragging a scalpel over every whorl and twist on the seal, and the Isonade's voice came to him like a wave crashing down over his brain:

::_No- no, don't do this, Katashi- we can live. We can live. I promise you-_::

'_No,_' he spat at it, '_you're the reason I'm dying, the reason Rei lost her child. You don't get to- to tell me _anything.'

Katashi took a deep breath past the swollen lump of terror lodged in his throat. His stomach roiled, bile clawing acidic up his throat. He needed to vomit. He needed to run from this, but there was nowhere to run to, and…

Really, there were worse ways to die.

If only he had asked Yugito what happened to the dead, where they went, but he never had and now the vast uncertainty that lay before him chilled him to the bone.

But something- something _better_- would come from this war, from this battle. The jinchuuriki might find a home, a place to accept them, and that was worth everything.

Dying would be worth it.

'_It has to be worth it._'

And before the fear could overwhelm him, before he could really comprehend all that he was giving up, before he could talk himself out of it, before he could act like a fifteen-year-old boy, he finished the last seal.

He felt the jutsu almost click into place, felt his chakra- his _life_- sucked from him into the gaping void of the ocean, felt everything he was wither away and-

His muscles turned to water, gray fog swimming before his eyes as he fell forward, bracing himself against his knee, but his knee was shaking, because _he_ was shaking.

Fifteen years wasn't long enough.

But- he smiled even as it cut his lips to shreds, a painful, terrible smile that somehow hurt worse than anything else-

It would have to do.

* * *

Katashi hunched over, his hand clenched over the gaping wound in his side, blood seeping from between his fingers. His other hand was braced on one shaking knee, his face white and screwed up, working eye fierce from beneath his bloody hair.

He looked pathetic.

"Fucking _finally_," Hidan muttered. Although now he had to haul the kid across the continent, which was going to be as much fun as a sword to the chest, while Kakuzu carried the Kyuubi vessel and no doubt bitched about the war destroying most of his investments.

"You know Jashin's going to be pissed with me for letting you live." He took a step off the Jashin symbol burnt into the ground.

"I'm not going to let _you_ live," the boy rasped, doubling over, spitting out a clot of blood that splattered on the ground.

"_Really?_ I'm about to piss my pants, I'm so frightened."

Katashi lifted his head and stared, his eyes the fathomless black of the depths. Blue-black chakra, dim as a candleflame in a storm, flickered on his skin as he grinned, teeth gleaming white as seafoam.

'_Huh-_'

Something roared from behind him, a sound like a thousand drums beating at once, subsiding into a low growl, a harsh grating of metal on stone.

The hairs rose on the back of his neck as a shadow crawled forward to envelop him, a great rectangle of darkness with a churning top, the refracted light of the moon opalescent on the ground before him, turning the boy's bloodied hands silver.

He shuddered as drops of seawater spattered the back of his neck, and met Katashi's eyes.

The boy's lips curled in a smile as he dragged one shaking hand up and forced his middle finger upright.

"Bye."

In a roll of thunder the breath was battered out of him, and the ground was torn from beneath his feet as the tidal wave crashed down on him and flung him into the air, tumbling over the edge of the cliff, the wave hurling him down into the ocean.

He saw Katashi collapse onto his knees, then fall forward, the pathetic child's chakra finally gone, before he plummeted.

The water slammed shut over him like the doors of a tomb, his scythe ripped from his hand by the impact, the sharp pricks of splinters but a small annoyance compared to the radiating agony of his newly-broken wrist as he hit the water.

The current pulled him down as he choked on the water pouring into his lungs, the wave crashing down on him and snapping his head back, black spots flashing before his eyes. An arm, still clutching a spear, floated above him, silhouetted against the shimmering disc of the moon. He blinked burning eyes, reached out as the cold seeped into his bones.

He kicked, limbs aching with cold, snarled as the robe dragged his limbs down- '_How ironic_' he thought grimly even as the moon receded farther and farther, as the pressure increased, as his ribs ground against each other, lethargy crawling cold and clammy as a snail into him.

The pressure forced him to open his mouth, squeezed the last faint bubbles of air out of rupturing lungs, the water growing darker and darker around him as the boy's power sucked him down into the depths. He could hear nothing but his own heartbeat, stuttering and dying, felt nothing but seawater cold and bitter in his mouth, his lungs, his stomach.

The pressure would crush him out of existence, reduce him to shreds roaming the ocean floor, and he would have cackled if he had air with delight, with envy of the boy's understanding of the best end for a servant of the Lord of Destruction, with thanks for-_ finally, finally, after a thousand years_- his death.

The moon disappeared into shadow as the darkness and the cold consumed him, the currents twisting him, pushing him to and fro as he sank, his robe hauling his limbs down.

The pressure made it hard to force his hand up to press his rosary to his lips. He could no longer see the gleaming sigil of Jashin in the darkness, but could feel it clenched in frozen fingers, a comfort and a light in the shadow.

He coughed on the water, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain as he bent forward, lips pressed to contorted fingers, the thin bones of the metacarpals bending, snapping and sending white-hot shoots of pain up numbed nerves as he felt the stone, kissed it, a last gesture of devotion.

His eyes bulged as the pressure grew too great, and he thought with grim joy,

'_I am coming, my lord-_'

Before with a great tearing, snapping sound like a green stick breaking, he felt something give, and thought no more.

* * *

Naruto slipped through the trees, branches tearing at his clothing, whipping him in the face and opening up a thin slash across one cheekbone. Kyuubi's chakra flared ruby in the darkness, the heat making his eye water as it closed up the wound.

He heard Kakuzu behind him, the other man's steps heavy and plodding, as if he knew that there was no place for Naruto to run to.

Kunai slid cold and hard against his fingers as he slipped his hand into his pouch, extended tendrils of lightning chakra and felt the ends coil around the looped hilt of the kunai, the leather starting to sizzle.

Kakuzu's steps were loud, coming from about seven o' clock-

Now.

He twisted, ripped his hand free, sent the kunai slashing through the air, the thin cords of electricity painting the forest blue-white.

Kakuzu dodged, cloak fluttering in the air behind him like a wisp of smoke, alighting on the floor of the clearing.

Naruto yanked back the kunai, let them float in the air by his face, the heat from the lightning scorching his skin, the musty smell of ozone thick in his nose.

Kakuzu grinned, and suddenly black threads poured from his skin like an explosion of parasites, slithered over the ground- slashed the air on their path towards him, the sound of their movements like maggots squirming within a corpse.

'_Fuck-_' he flipped sideways, felt the threads of lightning chakra emanating from his fingers shudder as the threads hit them and recoiled, sizzling, the smoke that poured off of them stinking of burning flesh.

Yanked back the kunai and let them fall, scattering on the branches around him, a last resort.

Kakuzu watched them fall, shedding his cloak in one sharp motion. He was dressed in black- how cliché- beneath it, and there were-

Naruto frowned even as he performed a few seals, stiff knuckles cracking with the motions. It looked almost like there were tumors beneath the cloth- four lumpy protrusions stretched the back of his shirt.

He left the tree and landed on the ground, flipped out of the way of a blast of kunai, lightning strikes slicing down into the earth, Kakuzu twisting out of their paths easily. He was fast for being so bulky.

There was a terrible ripping sound like wet paper shredding, and something white, infected with waving threads, broke free of Kakuzu's back.

A… mask?

It was made of white cloth, and turned sightless eyes to him, the black blotch marring the cloth seeming to shift malevolently. The earth shook beneath him, and he sprang just as a spear of soil burst free of the earth beneath him, clods of dirt spattering against his face as he switched with a broken branch, ending up crouched on the lower branch of a tall oak, trying and failing to stifle his heaving breaths.

Okay, so it used earth jutsu. Lucky for him that one of his affinities matched up.

Clones burst into being around him, flooded the clearing in a mass of black, several charging Raikyus in both hands, the light illuminating the clearing and gleaming eerily in Kakuzu's eyes as the threads plunged into the clones, zipped in and out of the bodies, smoke filling the clearing as Naruto charged his own Raikyu and launched himself off the branch, the earth opening for him. He hit the bottom of the hole, the shock making him bite through his own lip, blood smearing warm and wet over his chin.

The information from the dissipated clones filtered into his head, an overlay against the darkness of the soil as he burrowed through the earth to end up beneath Kakuzu.

'_Just like the Chuunin Exams._'

God, had it really been that long?

A clone up top sent a blade of wind towards the threads, slashed through several, clearing a path-

Three clones converged on the mask, Raikyus shrieking high and thin as they seared the air and plunged inside the mask, the mask jerking, threads stiffening, retracting into it. White-blue bolts rippled over the charring skin of the mask, the cloth shriveling beneath the relentless assault.

The earth yawned, shoved Naruto up, hurled him up beneath the mask, Raikyu howling as he plunged it straight into the mask, tearing a smoking hole as he shoved the sphere of electricity inside and tore his arm free, hurtling through the air to escape the threads. Landed on hands and knees, ankle rolling beneath him, making him gasp, but at least he hadn't hit a tree- The acrid smell of charred cloth made his eyes water as he scrambled back on hands and knees to escape the oncoming tangle of threads.

"You thought that was going to stop me?" Kakuzu inquired in a tone of sickly-sweet concern. "I have four more hearts, you know." He sounded far too amused with the entire situation.

'_Fuck._'

He rose from his crouch, lurched back as his ankle gave out beneath him, catching himself on one hand. Pain radiated warm and pulsing from his ankle, and he could feel it swelling against the inside of his pant leg, every shift in his stance biting deep and forcing air out in a tiny, breathless gasp. He forced his eyes open and glared, hissing as he fed chakra into the earth,

"Several hearts can be stopped just as easily as one." Earth crawled up his leg, the crunching sound of the clods hardening on his sprained ankle almost lost beneath the howling of wind. He flexed his ankle, testing its hold. Good- it kept his ankle still, and hopefully the Kyuubi could fix the sprain before too long. Kakuzu's eyes were riveted to the makeshift bandage.

"Impressive," Kakuzu said, and Naruto bared his teeth at the taint of fear coloring his voice, a slow, dark heat rising up his spine, a certainty that he could- and would- win. "I didn't expect you to know three elements."

"I've kind of made a career out of surprising people," Naruto rasped, blood rolling warm and wet down over his chin with every word. Kakuzu's eyes were riveted to the blood, and a slow, smug smile spread across his face as he seemed to think that the fact that Naruto was bleeding suddenly made him weak.

"You're not the only one who's built his reputation on surprises," Kakuzu said, his teeth stained pink with blood as he grinned, bending forward. A ripping sound filled the air, and Naruto tensed, creating a few clones and spreading them around the clearing as he watched Kakuzu.

Another mask, this one's toothy smile outlined in red, tore itself free of his back, tendrils slithering to the ground to hold it in the air, its blank eyes turning in Naruto's direction. Blood smeared its white cloth, and for a moment Naruto could see the pink-white color of decaying flesh within the ball of tendrils behind the mask, a fragment of the heart of some long-dead shinobi.

"Zukokku," Kakuzu rasped, blood trailing down the backs of his legs even as the tendrils twisted beneath his skin, sewing the gaping wound of his back up once more.

'_Mincing pain? Wha-_'

The mask answered his unasked question, opening its mouth. A small, golden ball formed between its teeth, expanding with every passing second, which couldn't be good, particularly as Kakuzu was looking _extremely_ pleased with himself, and he really didn't want to move-

The sphere suddenly burst its confines, racing towards him-

Eyes wide and every cell in his body screaming as the flames began to boil against his skin, he slammed his fingers together and dropped straight down into the sinkhole that opened up beneath him, feeling the flame singe his hair as it passed overhead.

The earth closed over him, and for a moment he simply rested in the darkness and silence, his eyes closed as dirt squashed against him. He dragged his hands up, wincing as he shook a beetle off his arm, and pressed them against the side of the sinkhole.

Thin tendrils of chakra spread through the ground, the small shockwaves of Kakuzu's steps reverberating down the chakra strings to his fingers. It was a neat trick that Noboru had taught him; apparently it was modeled after what spiders did with their webs. And while he hated spiders, he had to admit that the idea was a good one.

Yugito and Noboru had taught him one very important thing: it was all well and good to have a bottomless well of chakra and unrivaled stamina, but that meant nothing unless you also knew how to fight smart. He knew he'd never be a great strategist, but he'd figured out a few strategies that worked, and he was sticking with those.

His little finger twitched.

Okay, so he was to the right, about- he focused- fifty feet away, but heading towards his position.

A few shadow clones were still scattered around on the surface, and he released them, blinking as dirt rained down on his eyelashes, the clones' shared knowledge filtering into his brain. Kakuzu had put away the fire mask and gone for a mask with a yellow nose, some sort of… ox?

Probably lightning, then.

He blew out a frustrated breath, rolling his shoulders as they cracked, feeling the earth shudder around him as Kakuzu's steps echoed through the ground.

He was best with wind, so it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to take out the lightning mask.

Kakuzu was about ten feet away, and the cadence of his steps had changed, become harder, more frustrated. '_Good. Get him so angry he can't think straight._' Naruto twisted in the cold embrace of the earth, scrubbed the dirt off his face with the back of his sleeve.

He reached out and placed his hands on the wall of the hole, the earth groaning above him, clods raining down on his head as the ground split open and he leaped straight up with a burst of chakra-

The blue-white light of electricity stabbed into his eyes, but he performed a Kawarimi, the log that replaced him incinerated by Kakuzu's combined water and lightning attacks. Shit. He'd forgotten about Kakuzu's own affinity.

Whatever. It could be dealt with, because it had to be.

He crouched on the branch, performed a seal. A cyclone sprang up around the yellow mask, trapping it within the raging storm. Lightning bashed fruitlessly against the wall of wind, unable to break through as the tendrils shredded apart in the cyclone.

Good. He grinned, relief bubbling up warm and bright from his stomach, and formed two more seals, forming blades of wind chakra that floated above his hands as he leaped down to the ground. The mask seemed to turn its malevolent eyes to him, but he simply reached back and flung the wind knives, the invisible blades slicing straight through the cyclone and driving into the mask, slashing in and out of it like a needle through thread, pulverizing the heart within, the mask's last shriek of rage a roll of thunder.

The mask, shredded into so many pieces of cloth, fluttered gently down to earth like falling leaves.

Kakuzu's tendrils wound over the forest floor like bizarre snakes, glinting in the moonlight as the fire mask disengaged from Kakuzu's bloody back and floated in the air, small nimbuses of flame swirling in the air around it, the glowing red light giving the forest a demonic aura.

"Zukokku." Kakuzu grinned at him, exposing bloody, sharp teeth, even his teeth laced with those terrible black threads.

The mask opened its mouth again, another glowing sphere coalescing in the air before it. It grew, and before he had time to throw himself out of the way it was off, floating inexorably towards him, leaving nothing in its wake but ash and dying fires.

Fire-

Fire needed air to survive. The Zukokku jutsu needed air to survive.

And he knew how to push air _towards_ an object, mold it and shape it to his will, but pull it _away_?

It wasn't like he had any other options.

The flaming sphere rocketed towards where he crouched on the ashy earth, Kakuzu's eyes wide and triumphant in the gloom.

His clones launched themselves from the trees and the earth, battering Kakuzu with fists and feet even as the fire burned them away and the threads pierced them, leaving them as useless puffs of white smoke. The fire came closer, and Naruto closed his eyes, fingers flickering through seals, as he opened his hands and _willed _the air to come to him, visualizing strings, weaving a web of wind chakra with measured motions of his fingers.

Air brushed across the back of his neck, lapped at his palms, cold and dry.

Time had slowed, and he seemed to be the only thing moving at a normal speed as his fingers flew through seals, pouring more and more chakra into the web. Sweat rolled down his spine, soaked into the tattered collar of his shirt.

'_Come on. Just two more hearts._'

His hands blistered, the pinkish light shining through his eyelids growing brighter and brighter.

'_Come on._'

The web thickened, grew, tiny strands branching off like flowering shoots, weaving around each other, forming a thick net of chakra-

And as he felt the first lick of flame at his clothing, he reached out, coiled his fingers around the web, and _yanked_, tendons and ligaments burning hot and aching, a terrible sound tearing itself free of him as the air shoved its way past, slicing his clothing to ribbons and leaving him choking on nothing, on the total lack of anything to breathe.

And as the flame shuddered and flickered from existence, Naruto released the web, flung out tendrils of chakra to the kunai he had left scattered on the branches- one, two, three threads caught and held- and sprang, the rush of air back into the vacuum propelling him on as he curled his fingers, lightning buzzing hard and high in his ear, and flung the kunai into the mask's heart-

As the mask fell to the earth, he switched with a clone, ended up crouched on another branch, the wind stirring his hair. Naruto sagged, shook his head as Kakuzu smirked, his other hearts still pumping blood, still keeping him upright. _God_, this was never going to end.

But it had to. Kakuzu only had two hearts left.

"You're doing pretty well for yourself, boy," Kakuzu said to the empty air, glancing around at the trees.

It probably wasn't smart to get down from the trees, but if there was one thing Naruto was not, it was a long-range combatant. He dropped from the branches into a crouch, his scattered kunai rolling beneath his feet as he left the branch, watching Kakuzu stumble around the clearing.

"I think so, myself," Naruto sneered.

Kakuzu twisted to face him, water slashing out from his hands in a sheet of boiling liquid. Naruto dropped to the earth, pressed himself flat into its embrace, boiling water spattering the back of his neck, blisters rising. As the attack passed, he dug fingers into the ground and sprang, Kakuzu pivoting out of the way, following through, his fist slamming into his back.

The air was knocked from his lungs as he flipped in the air, hit the ground and scrambled back, pushing himself upright, involuntary tears streaming down dirty cheeks.

Kakuzu grinned, his smile bestial. "That little jinchuuriki girl you all love so much?" Kakuzu said as if he were discussing the weather. "When we take her bijuu, we'll leave her body for the wolves." He smirked. "Fitting. She is an animal."

The air froze in his lungs. The remaining flames of the Zukkoku bent towards him as if a mighty wind was blowing, and as he looked down he saw chakra crawling crimson up over his skin, washing down over him like a bloody waterfall in reverse, leaving burnt skin and red rivers of weeping veins in its wake. Looked up, saw Kakuzu, his face chalk-white, mouth half-open in a scream. Idly wondered what he must look like, to terrify him so.

Agony lanced up the sides of his skull as his teeth ground together, grew and filled his mouth with the taste and smell of blood, black, serrated claws forcing themselves out of his fingers, glinting reddish-

The Kyuubi was roaring, a thunderous sound that shook inside his bones at the threat to its servant, its possession, and the terrible fire that scorched his throat black mixed with his own fury, the world tinged black-red at how Kakuzu spoke so _casually_ of murdering Moriko-

Moriko that was innocence and light and life-

The grass around him curled and burned black, crumbling to ashes, and Kakuzu's eyes widened-

Naruto's scream shook the world as he closed the distance between them in five steps that left ash and nothingness in his wake. He couldn't breathe for the fury, every muscle coiled with tension, ready to spring, to bend itself to the task of _destroying_ that which threatened what he loved. The threads attacked, beat against the flame surrounding him, boiled away into the air-

Water poured down on him, a last-ditch attempt by Kakuzu to save himself, only to hiss on contact with his skin and evaporate into billowing steam that left Kakuzu's skin blistered and red, falling off in great sheets as he howled, raising shaking hands with flesh sloughing off the fingers-

Naruto's hand closed around his throat, yanked him into the air.

Skin split beneath his claws, blood dribbling red and thick down his arm, and he leered at the look of uncomprehending terror in Kakuzu's eyes. Bent close, uncaring as the aura of fire burned away Kakuzu's clothes, whispered,

"At least a wolf can survive alone." He drew back his free hand, clawed fingers springing open like a switchblade. There was no sound but Kakuzu's thin whimpers like a rabbit caught beneath the gaze of a beast. He could almost taste the fear that shone in Kakuzu's eyes."But you?"

He peeled his hand off Kakuzu's neck, patches of skin sticking to his palm, and let him drop. His hands darted forward, tore through through flesh and bone like a sword through air as fire and blood stained his skin crimson, curled around two laboring hearts, feeling them, slick and blood-warm, pulsing against his palms as he sank his claws into yielding flesh- "You're too weak to live without others' hearts to work for you."

Kakuzu gurgled, a bloody, bubbling sound, and warmth splashed down over Naruto's hand as he tore his claws from scarred flesh, twisting them as he pulled, pulverizing them in one deft wrench. Blood poured over his feet as he withdrew his arms, flung Kakuzu aside as if he were tossing a kunai. The man hit the ground and rolled end-over-end, limbs outflung like a puppet without strings, leaving a black smear on charred grass.

And as he slid to a stop, the rush of demonic chakra cut off as if someone had wrenched a faucet shut. The crimson miasma of chakra glittered, broke apart and drifted into the sky in shards of red light as all the strength suddenly fled from him-

His legs slipped out from beneath him, and pain radiated up his spine as he fell backwards into the ash, coughing as black grains smeared hot and harsh over his skin, crawled into his nose. The stars shone overhead through the smoke and steam, apart from the terror and pain of the world below.

He had to move. Rolled his head to the side and stared at Kakuzu's corpse, biting back a shriek of agony as the motion pulled skin burned by the Kyuubi's chakra, demonic chakra winding over his skin, new, fresh skin rising from the black burns like grass blades after winter.

Kakuzu lay face down in the clearing, his entire back an open, raw ruin, black threads dangling into the hole as blood spread out like an inkblot around him, glittering silver-black in the moonlight.

It was over.

And the very _idea_ of moving seemed too terrifying to contemplate, but Katashi needed him.

But first, to make sure this opponent would never rise again, would never threaten all that he loved. He crawled to the body, leaned forward over it, set a kunai at the base of the skull, and sawed, skin opening over yellowish fat, fat giving way to the white column of the spine. The blade ground against the vertebrae, an earsplitting noise, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on, exhausted muscles bulging in his arms, broke the gray string of the spinal cord. The rest of the neck gave way easily, blood streaking his fingers red as he finally pulled the head away from the rest of the body, the threads seeming to fight him.

Not enough time to incinerate the rest of the body, just the head would be enough. But _God,_ he was tired, and fucking around with some dead psychopath's head while Katashi fought for his life was not his idea of a good time.

Lightning lanced through the skull, lit it up between his hands as a globe of light. It stunk of burning flesh and bone. The eyes went first, the brain liquefying after as he poured more chakra into it.

Good. Done.

The skull thudded to the ground at his feet, a black, charred shape, as he braced himself on the ground and shoved himself upright, staggering towards where he could see moonlight through the broken trees.

It was completely, utterly silent, and only the wind stirred. Something twisted in his gut.

He broke into a limping trot, out from beneath the shadows of the trees onto the rocky cliffs that snaked along the ocean. The headland jutted out into an ocean as calm and flat as a mirror, the clifftop muddy and waterlogged, puddles gleaming from a distance. Not a solitary ripple disturbed the sea's silvered surface, and the sight- the terrible, deadened silence- made him swallow.

It wasn't right-

And he was running, gravel rolling beneath his feet, exhausted muscles burning as he forced them to move, his mouth dry and hot even as every other part of his body was damp with cold sweat. His shadow stretched long and dark against the rocky ground, and only the sound of his panting breaths and the crunch of rock beneath his tread filled the air.

It was silent, and he couldn't see Katashi's jubilant face, and he couldn't hear Kiba's exuberant howls, and everything, _everything_ was all wrong, because Katashi might be- no, he wouldn't think about that, wouldn't remember his brother's face as he last saw it, white and calm and sure.

He had to move faster, had to get to Katashi, had to save him.

He skidded around the corner, rocks flying from beneath his feet and plummeting over the edge, but he had no time to contemplate the drop, clambering over boulders onto the bluff.

The headland was a wasteland of mud, churned into a slop of blood and water, the air thick with the stench of death.

Naruto sloshed onto the path and caught sight- his heart coiled in on itself, tearing itself into pieces- of blue-tinged skin against the brown sickness of the mud. His feet lost traction in the slick, and he fell to his knees, bloody water covering his hands, his legs as he scrambled up the slope, sliding, coughing as the mud sprayed into his eyes, and he ended up kneeling in the slick, sliding his arms under Katashi's limp body, feeling the horrible softness of his torso beneath the flak jacket.

'_Oh, God._' It was a gut wound, a chest wound, a lingering, agonizing death- he had seen the poor bastards with them, knew how long, how terribly long it took for them to die, their eyes fixed on Heaven as their throats shredded raw and red from agony. '_Not him- not him, he can't be in pain-_'

He didn't recognize his own voice, strangled and terrible, as healing chakra prickled over his skin and disappeared into the gaping void of Katashi's broken body. "Come on- come on- you can't die, Katashi. You can't-" his fist slammed into the ground, mud spattering across his cheek.

"It's the _first fucking battle of the war!_"

A sob tore from him. Katashi's skin was chilly and damp against his hands- shock- as he tried to force healing chakra into him, but it-

It wasn't _working, _and he couldn't just force this, not when it came to healing, because he could do more harm than good if he didn't know what he was doing, and he didn't.

He didn't know what to do to save him.

He couldn't save him.

He looked back down, held Katashi closer to him, bile welling in his throat as he looked down at his brother, at the cratered wound of his chest, the bones caved in, blood staining the flak jacket black as Katashi coughed, ribs smashing against each other, the mechanisms of life grinding to a slow halt.

He bent closer, laid a hand on a cold forehead that would soon have no warmth left, and whispered in a voice ragged from the cold and the terror of war,

"Hey, kid, wake up." Katashi was light in his arms, so light, and tears started in his eyes at this, the final confirmation that Katashi- this boy- was only a child, only fifteen, dying in the service of a country that was not his own, because-

A sob tore from his throat. He was dying, here, alone, because Naruto had asked him to.

Katashi's eyelids fluttered, the thin, transparent layer of the third eyelid sliding back, baring unfocused hazel eyes, his gaze rolling sightlessly in Naruto's direction.

"Naruto?" he rasped, his voice bubbling in his chest, blood from the lungs, pink and frothy, spilling over his lips with each word.

"Yeah," Naruto said, his voice shaking- he had to keep it steady, had to, had to keep Katashi calm and still and alive- as he squeezed Katashi's cold hand, "I'm here. Everything's okay."

Katashi frowned, brow wrinkling, his voice soft and almost lost amid the cries of the wounded and the dying on the beach, "Is it over?"

Naruto choked on a sob, bent closer, smoothed brown hair stiff with blood out of the clouding eyes, said, "Yeah. It's over." His lips twisted in a weary, ironic smile, tears falling down his cheeks, the only warm thing left in the world, as he repeated, "It's over."

"Good," Katashi said. Every word he spoke seemed to harm him more, his jacket turning black ever faster, Naruto's hands and arms and sleeves streaked with brilliant crimson, Katashi's heart fluttering as blood left his body and smeared over the ground.

"I can hear the waves," Katashi said, bloody lips curling in a smile. "I missed them for so long, but-" he coughed, the sound crackling like frost on a winter's morning, "-I'm glad I got to see them again."

Naruto looked up, and saw through blurring eyes the final irony. There were no waves, no curls of water lapping at the shore strewn with bodies and wreckage. There were only the wingbeats of a thousand carrion birds circling the battlefield, inspecting their new feast.

"They're beautiful," he forced out, trying to reassure, trying to repent, to give comfort to a boy who was dying for his folly.

Katashi's crushed chest shuddered against his hands, his arms, his heavy head lolling onto Naruto's shoulder as he knelt in the filthy mud, tainted with blood, knowing there was no help coming.

"Good," Katashi breathed, dissolving into coughs, the deep, hacking sounds making him spasm against Naruto, shattered bones grinding against each other.

"Oh, _God._" He was helpless in the face of death, helpless to do anything but hold his hand, helpless to do anything but sit there and fail to comfort a dying boy. "_Please,_" and his voice cracked and shuddered and broke like Katashi's life was breaking, "Please…" He held him closer, choked on tears as Katashi's nails dug into his arm, "_Please…_ don't die."

Katashi's wracking coughs subsided, and he fell back against Naruto's arms, blinking blinded eyes at the gray sky, flat, tired, promising nothing but more death, more doom, more hatred, more pain.

"I…" he said, words slurred by the blood leaking from his mouth, from his chest, "I think… I think I'd like to sleep now."

No-

Naruto bent closer, curling around his thin form, shielding him from the rain that pelted down around them, his throat clogged with tears, his eyes swollen.

"Go ahead," he said, forcing the words out, feeling like they had taken half of his heart with them, "Go ahead." He choked, rubbed tears out of his eyes with the back of his mud-smeared wrist, "I'll see you…" he pressed his lips against Katashi's forehead, mud and blood smearing cold and greasy across his lips, blood spattered across Katashi's face, the bloodstained mouth, the pale skin that heralded death,

"I'll see you when you wake up."

Katashi's chest rose, taking in a breath. Naruto curled close, stared into those clouded hazel eyes, etched every golden striation on his heart, the face lined with pain.

His brother's eyelids drifted shut, his torn chest fell, and his breath slipped away from him and into the air in one fading, long sound that trailed into nothingness.

He did not open his eyes again.

* * *

They buried him on a headland overlooking the sea he loved.

The air Naruto breathed seemed to freeze in his lungs as he crouched at the edge of the grave, spread hands resting on the lip of the pit.

The broken sword's barely-noticeable weight rested on his back, pressing into his spine, scalding with the weight of all it had once done and now would never do again.

It had been Yugito's, once, and it would be hers once more, if only so that some meager remnant of his brother would see the end of the war.

His brother. His brother who fought everyone for the right to have the first squeeze on any new tube of toothpaste, who trailed around after him pestering him for more and better jutsus, who lacked any semblance of common sense.

Katashi lay curled at the bottom of the pit, thin arms wrapped around scarred legs. His eyes were closed, but he didn't look peaceful: the lines of agony on his hollow face were there to stay, tokens of remembrance for the terrible manner of his death. He was skinny and silent and nothing like the bolt of bright energy he had loved.

Earth squelched cold and clammy between his fingers as he caught sight of crusted saltwater- _Katashi had been alive and fierce and in the place he loved scarcely an _hour_ ago_- gleaming like scratched diamonds in his hair.

"The war will end someday," he whispered. "I'll end it- I'll end it for you."

The stars were harsh and distant above, separate.

He wished he could separate himself from the grief coiled around his spine.

He let chakra flow from his fingers into the earth, shivering as the ground shuddered beneath him, and with a groan the sides of the gaping hole slid together, hiding his brother's beloved, bloody face from view, to sleep in silence forever.

He groped behind himself until his fingers touched hard wood, dragging the makeshift sign forward- made of bits of driftwood from the broken ships sinking in the bay- and set it upright at the head of the grave.

Naruto pounded it into the earth with the hilt of a kunai, the itchiness of the mud drying on his skin a dim annoyance, held at bay by the ball of ice in his chest that was expanding to encompass everything inside him.

Not even the tears trailing clean tracks through the encrusted blood and dirt on his face were warm.

He didn't look at Hinata, who stood with her arms wrapped around herself, or Kiba, his face harsh and silvered in the fall of moonlight through the clouds, or Shino, huddled inside his bulky coat, cradling his broken arm, as he turned the kunai over in his hand. It was cold and hard and utterly, utterly-

Useless.

A thick, choked sob burst from his throat and scraped it raw as he knelt in the mud above where Katashi lay entombed, dying for a war he would never see won, and stabbed the blade into the wood.

The scratching of the kunai against the wood shuddered through his shaking fingers -not shaking with cold or illness but only grief that crawled inside him and left everything blurry and silent- and up his arms as he cut into the splintered remnant of Katashi's final triumph,

'Katashi's battlefield.'

* * *

**A/N:** All comments and criticism are loved, and don't forget to check out the awesome fanart!


	30. Chapter 30

**A/N**: Sorry for the delay! Midterms took over my life for about a month. I feel like this chapter's something of a filler chapter, but I wanted to write a scene where Yugito goes all out, and show a little of how damaged Shinobu's been by being a jinchuuriki. I also just wanted to get a chapter out this month; I felt bad for going a month without one. Hope you enjoy it!

* * *

_For as long as I can remember  
I have wanted to__  
Silence every beating heart  
Every sound of breathing._  
- 'Morning on Earth' by Pain of Salvation

* * *

"- and Moriko's really enjoying the chance to grow vegetables for everyone, which is good."

"Especially considering the supply shortage," Sakura agreed, holding up a forest-green shirt to Shinobu's back as the other girl rummaged through a bargain bin.

Although really, it was silly to have anything marked 'bargains' when everything in the store was a bargain. Bargains because of their shoddiness, Sakura amended as the stitching on the sleeve came apart in her hands. She tossed it aside onto a rack.

The racks were almost empty, having been picked over by hollow-eyed refugees from Kerumigakure and the smaller farming villages in the Land of Fire, and what little was left was made of bad cloth and dyed in terrible, muddy colors by the inexperienced populace of Konoha, nothing like the bright silks from Kumo that she remembered seeing…

Before the war.

The cashier, his face pinched and lined, watched them, his eyes glinting with feverish desperation for a sale.

"How's she doing?"

Shinobu turned around, a white blouse and dark pants dangling from her fingers. "Moriko?"

Sakura nodded, and Shinobu disappeared into the dressing room, the door clicking shut behind her. "She doesn't like the Academy. I think the other kids don't really understand why she's so far behind them, much less why she doesn't cry when she nicks herself."

"Does she do that often?"

Shinobu laughed, the sound short and sharp. "Yesterday she severed the last joint of her index finger when they were doing kunai drills. It was a good thing I was on break-" something she obviously wasn't getting enough of, Sakura thought, recalling the dark shadows beneath Shinobu's eyes and the slow, measured steps she took, "-so I popped over to the Academy to fix it."

Shinobu's usual scrubs went over the top of the door, the wall rattling as Shinobu banged into it, hopping on one foot to get into the trousers.

"When I got there, Noboru was in a fury, yelling at the instructor about his disregard of the instructions we left that specifically stated that she was not allowed to handle sharp objects. And if you've never seen Noboru angry, I don't recommend starting now. Moriko, of course, didn't particularly care about what was going on. She ran over to me and got blood all over my one clean pair of scrubs while I reattached her finger."

"By 'clean,' I'm guessing you mean that they only have two or three people's blood on them rather than ten," Sakura said.

Shinobu laughed. "Got it in one."

Sakura thumped her head back against the wall of the dressing room and closed her eyes, bile crawling up her throat, tears itching against the inside of her eyelids as a lump grew in her throat.

Was this what the situation had done to them- reducing them to finding a joke about blood on scrubs funny?

Was this- morbid, flat, uncaring- what they were destined to become?

She swallowed and straightened, blinking back the tears as she turned to face the door, waiting for Shinobu to open it.

"So where are the others, by the way? I didn't see any of them when I came by to pick you up."

"Naruto and Katashi are still out on the front- they should be back soon- and Varg's working on one of the new vegetable plots. Noboru and Moriko are at the Academy, Riko's at the Hokage Tower doing her strategy thing, Yugito's been on her mission with Hatake-san for a few days now, and Gaara left with those two guys in green for the Southern Front a few hours before you came."

The door opened and Shinobu stepped out, tugging at the bottom of the shirt. "What do you think?"

Sakura pursed her lips, standing and circling Shinobu, who looked uncomfortable with the scrutiny. Well, the shirt was a bit large at the waist, but a few alterations should make it perfectly serviceable and cute. _Anything_ was better than those terrible, shapeless black shirts Shinobu wore when she wasn't on duty.

Although really, considering the guy Shinobu seemed to like, maybe the baggy clothing was some sort of dating strategy.

"Lose the pants, keep the shirt."

Shinobu shrugged and ducked back into the dressing room, emerging a few moments later in her scrubs, these marked with faded bloodstains that the hospital washing machines had been unable to remove. Sakura avoided glancing at them, grabbing her free hand.

Sakura dragged her to the cash register, only to be pulled to a screeching halt as Shinobu dug in her heels, staring at the shop owner as if she was going up against the Kyuubi.

"Shinobu?" Sakura whispered, facing her.

The older girl's face was frozen, lips pulled into some awful, trembling attempt at a smile that positively emanated terror.

"I-" Shinobu's voice was suddenly thin and harsh, as if her breath was strangling in her throat, "-I'm not so good with people I don't know."

"You were fine with Tsunade," Sakura said. More than fine, really, considering the way Tsunade groused about not being able to shut her up.

"I've got the others at my back when I'm dealing with her."

"It's just a cashier," Sakura hissed, feeling the man's bemused gaze boring into her back.

"C-could you-" Shinobu was unable to finish her request, her eyes huge, her face ashen, and the fear in her eyes broke Sakura's heart.

She reached out and squeezed her shoulder in silent commiseration, nodding. "Yeah. Sure." Gently she fished Shinobu's wallet and the shirt out of her clenched fingers and went to the cashier, paying the ridiculously high price.

Although since the supply lines had been cut- well, she amended, they still had one left- she understood why the prices had been jacked up so high.

Shinobu had exited the store and was loitering outside, ignoring the suspicious glances from the Kerumigakure refugees.

"Here you go," Sakura said, handing back the wallet and shirt. Shinobu smiled with bitten lips, ducking her head in silent thanks.

"Anything you need to buy?" Shinobu asked, stroking the shirt as if hardly believing that she had some new clothes.

"Sasuke's apartment is in dire need of dishwashing soap," Sakura said darkly. "He's let all of the dishes since we came home just pile up in the sink, and I'm starting to think that a new life-form's going to pop out of there any day now."

Shinobu grinned and turned on her heel, bouncing down the street towards the nearest grocery store. Sakura followed in her wake, watching as the crowds of people parted for Shinobu like paper beneath a knife.

It hurt her heart to watch Shinobu and the others, to see the cold steel in Yugito's eyes or the uncomprehending blankness in Varg's. To see the choking, desperate fear enfold Shinobu as the woman- the most powerful medic she had ever met- confronted something so simple as talking to a cashier.

And now she- finally- understood what it meant to be jinchuuriki.

They were all trapped in their own agonies, so desperately, terribly alone.

* * *

Yugito shifted, a branch digging into her thigh.

The long black arm of the shrapnel cannon thrust into the sky, its giant wheels crushing the thick ruts in the road left by wagons out of sight.

Moya shinobi- half chuunin, half jounin- surrounded it, what little of their faces she could see beneath their metal face masks suspicious as they walked beside the team of horses on their way through Bloody Wood.

Hatake had explained the myth behind the name: in times past, a great massacre of the Uchiha Clan had taken place here, and it was said that their blood had soaked the earth and dyed it red, testament to their suffering.

The enemy shinobi were right to be suspicious, considering what she and Hatake had been doing to their comrades on the other shrapnel cannons for the past three days.

Hatake lay to her left, his chin resting on his folded arms as he scrutinized the convoy, the red Sharingan eye whirling slowly in the dimness.

"More than we expected," he whispered, doing his best to drop the sibilants, as they carried too far.

"Yes." They couldn't call in backup- there was none- or let the cannon pass. It was almost within range of Konoha, and to let it continue on its course for another hour was to invite disaster. Still- she didn't look forward to fighting a hundred Moya shinobi, all armed with Kumo techniques along with Moya's own paltry creations.

Sweat rolled down her neck, soaking into her already damp blacks. Her kusarigama, carefully covered with black paint to minimize glare, rested on her hip, impatient.

Hatake raised his hand, miming a pincer movement. She nodded.

A tested strategy; she and a clone of Hatake would close on opposite sides, throwing the cannon guards into confusion while the real Hatake disabled the cannon itself. Hatake had admitted that he knew nothing about the internal workings of these machines, and had found the best way to disable them was simply to pour all the gunpowder on the cart into the barrel of the cannon, then blast lightning into the interior.

The resulting explosion did much to maim and kill the guards.

As the convoy passed, she sliced a tree further down the road with a blade of wind chakra, the mighty oak swaying once, twice, leaves fluttering with the motion, before with a great groan and snapping of bark and limbs, it toppled into the road, a cloud of red dust flying into the air.

The Moya shinobi milled about, several spitting curses, and Yugito used their distraction to leap from her position in the higher branches of a tree to another across the road, the slender branch bending beneath her weight, kept from snapping only by a cushion of wind chakra.

A handspring flung her onto the trunk, where she adhered her feet to the bark with an application of chakra, and crouched, gazing through the foliage onto the road.

The shinobi were forming up into a circle, the smell of sulfur making her eyes water as a few of the chuunin popped off a few small poison cloud jutsus, the jounin barking at them to conserve their chakra.

She saw something shudder in the underbrush across the road- Hatake's clone getting ready to move.

This was what she was born for. To kill, to hurt, to maim, to destroy the living, because they did not deserve to live. They didn't deserve to walk this planet.

A deep breath as she tensed and fished out her kusarigama, muscles coiling, sweat rolling sticky and warm down her spine.

And in silence she hurled herself through the foliage, Raikyus already coalescing beside her as she landed in their midst, the balls of lightning smashing into the ones surrounding her in a ring of thunder as they flew back and landed in clouds of dust, shaking, screaming, dying.

The chain of the kusarigama zipped out, crushed a man's face into pulp, splinters of bone surrounding the metal sphere as it sank into his skull. She yanked it back, blood splattering on the ground, and whirled it around her, clearing a space.

A jounin closed, a net of lightning crackling between his hands as he reached for the chain-

Not happening.

She pulled it back and slid beneath the chain with catlike grace as it passed over her, the soft thud of impact with a body behind her shuddering through it into her hand as she shoved herself upright before the jounin, the scythe grating on his armor as she tried to eviscerate him.

Should've noticed the bulk beneath his clothes-

He tried to grab her with his net once more as she twisted away from his hands, following through with the kusarigama, the blade carving through his throat. Hot liquid sprayed over her face as she flipped back, out of range of the lightning bolt slashing down from the sky.

She bared her teeth in joy. This was where she belonged. This was where she knew exactly who she was, and what to do.

A scream went up from the other side of the road as Hatake's clone entered the fray, spraying a ball of flame across the road that burned five shinobi to charred, bleeding forms that writhed screaming on the road.

Horses were screaming, rearing in their harnesses.

Three chuunin thundered towards her, swords glinting in the sunlight, and she picked one off with her kusarigama before they were on her, slashing at her face and abdomen as she backpedaled, pulled her chain in close, and dropped, the swords passing overhead as she wrapped the chain around their necks and yanked.

Their heads grotesquely misaligned, they fell, taking the chain with them. No time to unravel it, so she dropped the kusarigama and unsheathed her sword, creating a net of lightning above the battlefield that rotated slowly, bolts of lightning searing the air as they darted down, taking out shinobi with each strike.

A miasma of poison drifted towards her, sea-green and pulsing like a jellyfish.

She had no wind chakra to push it away, and so flung a ball of white-hot flame across the road, the fire pushing through the miasma, sucking the air into it until it burned it all away.

Smoke and poison and lightning covered the battlefield. More shinobi hurtled towards her, throwing kunai- one sank into her bicep, and she tore it out with her teeth as she severed a woman's hand, sword cleaving through skin and tendon. The woman howled, and Yugito charged a Raikyu in her free hand and shoved it into her stomach.

She choked on the poison the next man breathed into her face, forced shaking fingers through a jutsu Noboru had taught her to clear the lungs. Her eyes watering, she couldn't dodge the fist that slammed into her cheekbone and snapped her head to the side, pain flashing red behind her eyes. The Nekomata yowled with fury. She stumbled back, shaking her head.

Breathing easy again, she hooked her leg around the fool's knee and yanked. He collapsed forward, sword spitting him through the belly, exiting through the spine.

More lightning struck from her net, the number of Moya-nin shrinking inexorably as she and Hatake carved through them, Hatake's clone using jutsu after jutsu, and she wondered for a moment how his chakra reserves were doing.

It took a minute for her to pull the sword free. She planted a foot on the man's belly and shoved him off, his eyes- shocked, agonized, liquid with tears- staring into her face as she watched the light fade from them.

The dusty road had turned to red-brown sludge that clung to her sandals, wormed its way into the wounds on her feet, smeared itself over her clothes.

Her sword stank of opened entrails. She drove her elbow back into an attacker's throat, the shinobi stumbling back, hands clutching at their throat. Lightning leaped from her fingers into his chest, stopped his heart.

Someone else charged, boiling water flying from her mouth, arcing overhead as she bent back, planting her hands on the road so that her body formed an arch, and as she came close Yugito brought her feet up in a kick, heels smashing into her chin and snapping her head back, continuing the roll so that she stood upright once more.

The Moya-nin began to waver, and she could see them considering fleeing in their eyes.

Pathetic.

One man turned and began to sprint for the trees, and in three quick steps she was behind him, swinging for the cowardly legs that would let him escape his due.

Her sword cleaved the man's skin, blood spattering her face, and bit deep, lodging in the back of the patella. Tendons severed, the man collapsed to one side, the force yanking her sword from her grip.

Too much trouble to pull it free. She glanced at the cart, where Hatake was pouring powder down the barrel.

She broke into a trot to go back to the Moya-nin, then halted, the breath freezing in her lungs.

Like lamps flickering on at dusk, a hundred chakra sources flared to life beneath them- Iwa shinobi using their village's jutsu to blend in so seamlessly with the earth that even their chakra systems became indistinguishable from the chakra of the roots and the microfauna that lived in the dirt, indistinguishable even to the Sharingan.

Fuck, she should've _known_- no one would send shinobi as weak as the Moya-nin to guard one of these alone-

Riko could've sensed them, but Riko wasn't here, and there were too many, too many for her to take out now, even with Hatake's help-

She felt one of his lightning clones appear behind her, the hairs on the back of her neck rising as electricity raced across her skin.

"I'm starting to run out of chakra, and the charges aren't set yet," she heard within the crackling of the lightning that made up the clone. "I need more time."

Iwa-nin rose from the earth around her like plants after a long winter. One, overconfident, charged, and Yugito sidestepped, grabbed her by the back of her shirt, and with a grunt, twisted and flung her beneath the rearing horses.

The hooves came down, the skull collapsing like an eggshell.

Another body to use-

No more help from Hatake.

Only she stood against them.

"I can give you time," she said calmly. "Keep working on it."

A crackle. "Understood."

The few remaining Moya-nin were staring around them, mouths agape, as the Iwa-nin looked around them at the collapsed bodies littering the road.

They must not have known the Iwa-nin were waiting; must have been sent to guard the gun only so that they would wear down her and Hatake, leaving them weakened for the Iwa-nin to take out.

The last ones would have to die- they could not carry the news that Kumo was willing to sacrifice them like this home to their compatriots.

The Moya-nin all had been sent to be sacrificed, and for a moment she felt a flicker of pity.

The Iwa-nin swarmed the last Moya-nin, killed them in a few seconds, and turned to face her, grinning.

Yugito shook her head, sweat trailing down her nose, her eyes burning, and shifted her weight as her legs began to cramp, the adrenaline rush wearing off. The emptiness of growing chakra exhaustion gnawed at her. She had enough to take most of them out, but she didn't know if she could hold all of them off enough for Hatake to finish with the gun, especially since he had no clones to form a barrier around the cart. She cast her eyes upwards to check the lightning net: it held, but she couldn't expect it to do much against a hundred shinobi.

"Come on you bastards," she muttered, bending to scoop up a tanto from the corpse lying next to her, and standing, forming a sphere of fire in her hand. It grew, and she could feel the skin of her palm blistering beneath the glove.

A dome of earth shot up, beginning to close over her-

She leaped, clawed at the hole, and squirmed out of the dome, the edges of the hole scraping her ankle raw as she pulled herself free and hurled the fire into the Iwa-nin surrounding the dome. One began to scream, and yanked off the metal mask he wore as it began to cook his flesh.

Nothing as simple as a chakra-draining dome was going to get her.

Lightning scythed down from the net, leaped from shinobi to shinobi, as she leaped into the air, plummeted to earth, blades of wind exploding in a circle around her, slicing through stomach and spine, cleaving five shinobi in two as they fell, halved, their arms flailing in uncontrolled spasms.

More piled on her. She created lightning clones, let them race off to fight the other shinobi, and dove into combat, tanto slicing the air. A woman leered at her, leaned forward- she flipped the tanto in her hand, struck upwards, knife sinking through the soft skin of the chin, through the tongue, lodging in the bone of the palate.

Yugito grabbed the man behind her, used him as leverage to propel herself up, the top of her foot smacking the hilt of the tanto and driving it into the woman's brain.

She let go of the man's shirt as she flipped, ended up behind him, and coated her hand with lightning, punching into the man's lung. He spasmed around her fist, blood flecking her face once more, and she withdrew her hand and shoved him forward into the oncoming shinobi.

Too many shinobi.

Chakra reserves at about thirty percent, unless she drew on the Nekomata's chakra, which she would prefer not to-

A spear of earth burst from the road beneath her, carved a deep furrow up the inside of her leg, blood running black-red down her leg, pooling around her as she roared, stumbling back.

Fuck. Too many shinobi, not enough chakra.

She needed to end this quickly or she'd be unable to finish the mission. She needed to crush them into the dirt, leave them as piles of red, stinking meat, testament to their weakness.

The Nekomata stirred inside her, her veins burning with rage, with the need to kill.

Blood welled in her throat, ebony flame rising, burning on her skin, on the road around her, and she fell to the earth, outflung fingers digging into the road, sensing allies, sensing bones.

Bones beneath, slumbering in the clay-

Thirty, maybe forty.

Bones that hummed, that sang with potential, with possibility, with the urge to rise.

Yugito plastered herself to the road, black flame scorching it dark, and she closed her eyes and-

Stopped breathing, her heart stilling in her chest, as bones rustled and whispered beneath her, dreaming fierce dreams.

Dreams that she slid into, slippery as fog.

* * *

_Death was a river._

_She stood in the middle of it, endless water slipping around her thighs and plastering her clothes to her skin, goosebumps rising on her arms. The river stretched away into a distant horizon on both sides, straight as a sword blade._

_The water was clear as glass, and she glanced down at where her feet curled against the uniformly gray gravel beneath. No algae or fish disturbed her silent contemplation of calluses and scars, thick knuckles gnarled from campaign._

_There was a terrible, dull silence, the world wrapped in fog, veiling the land of the dead from her sight. Only the land of life was visible: a beach of white sand sloping into the beginnings of a forest, the tall ash trees fading into the fog, everything illuminated by a pale, weak light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere._

_She, who lived astride the boundary between life and death, was the only one who could stand in the waters of the river._

_Not even her fire could survive here._

_Closing her eyes, she let her fingertips rest on the surface, stretching her senses-_

_Beyond the river, back into life-_

_Searching for the bones she felt beneath her in the physical realm, entombed in clay._

_Their names surfaced in her mind- Uchiha, the ancestors of that boy Sasuke- and she turned on her heel to face the veil of fog, the waters tugging at her clothes as she moved._

_She spoke the names into the fog, even as their last memories flooded her, as she recalled the never-felt sensation of a sword opening her from collarbone to groin, of a living tree crushing her to pulp, the earth swallowing her._

_Recalled a man she never knew named Madara, and a woman- matriarch of the clan- red-haired and red-eyed, and somewhere upriver the Nekomata yowled its recognition:_

_Fox. Kyuubi. _

_And as the names and the memories came to her, so did the Uchiha, emerging from the mists that shrouded the lands beyond._

_They were tall and pale, most with black hair, a few with a shocking red the color of blood smeared on skin, their eyes red with blood and flame and rage._

_A woman, her face still marked with the open wound left by the axe that killed her, stepped forward and stopped short of the river, intangible, the color of her hair and clothing slowly leeching away into the mists, the Uchiha behind her a silent, pale mass, expressionless._

_Yugito knew her immediately, as if she was a long-lost friend, the phantom agony of a steel axe cleaving her skull open ringing in her head as she met her eyes._

_Her voice was like a wind rustling through nonexistent trees._

"_Out of the pale lands you have called us, and we have come, river-walker."_

"_I ask for your strength," Yugito said, raising her hands to them, palm-up, the water streaming down her arms, "as token of the fealty you bear me."_

_The woman bared her teeth. "You ask for our bloodline?" The massed Uchiha whispered, the sound gray and soft as snow falling._

"_I ask for your bones and your blood," said Yugito, the words coming as naturally to her lips as a sword hilt to her hand. "For I already have your souls."_

_The woman snarled, lips peeling back in a feral sneer. The phantom skin covering her sloughed off, and for a moment she stood on the beach, flickering, a rotting skeleton, the top of the skull caved in with bits of bone jutting into the air. _

_But Yugito did not flinch, and the Uchiha fell silent._

"_You may have our bones, river-walker," the skeleton said as skin reformed once more._

"_And your blood?"_

"_That, too, is yours to use as you wish." Red eyes flickered. "For even we cannot deny the one who stands in the water."_

"_I thank you," Yugito said, and turned, the water pulling at her, claiming her, even as she waded to the long beach and lifted one foot, staring into the ash forest beyond, pale light dappling the flat green grass beneath the branches._

_She could feel resistance, the land of life pushing her back into the river, the river pulling her, and the urge to stop, to give in, to spend eternity in the water, listening to the silence, overwhelmed her-_

_But Naruto and Katashi and the others were in the forest, and she belonged with them._

_Closing her eyes, she placed her foot upon the shore.

* * *

_Kakashi looked up from where he was pouring powder into the gun, Sharingan focusing on Yugito's limp form through the melee of lightning clones and Iwa-nin.

And all of a sudden he couldn't breathe-

There was no black-tinged chakra rushing through her, no black cataract roiling in her throat, and with the terrible clarity that was the gift of the Sharingan, he saw that her chest did not rise, that her pulse did not beat with life.

That she was dead.

The Iwa-nin surrounding her looked baffled and affronted, a few of them casting confused glances in his direction, as if asking him to explain her sudden collapse.

She couldn't be dead- one of the jinchuuriki couldn't have fallen so suddenly. They had just started to form a makeshift partnership, and it couldn't have ended like this.

Small black flames were burning around her, sustained by nothing, no wood or plants, and Kakashi shook his head as he saw-

Something was moving beside her, a tiny hillock forming beside her hand, like someone was pushing against the earth's surface from below, as if he would see tiny hands if he looked close enough.

More hillocks formed, scattered around the road, the dirt beginning to smoke, to boil. Kakashi grabbed the last barrel of powder and began pouring it into the yawning barrel, glancing at the Iwa-nin.

However, the enemy shinobi didn't seem particularly interested in engaging him. They were staring down at the bumps in the earth beneath their feet, one lifting his foot, exposing a great blister rising on his sole.

It was almost like the earth was…

Burning from the inside out.

Was this something Yugito had done? Some power of the Nekomata?

The red clay broke apart, and something within, white mixed with black, glittered in the sunlight, reached into the air, five columns of bone spread out like grasping talons, clawing at the earth.

Skeletal hands reached for the sky, and he couldn't tear his gaze from them, his mouth dry with horrified fascination.

They were here-

And from the blood-red clay the Uchihas rose, wreathed in flame.

Chalk-white bone gleamed in the sunlight, the air filled with the hissing of fire, the soft rattle and clink of bone on bone, and the silence was deafening, the Iwa-nin unable to make a sound, their eyes wide and white with terror.

The Moya-nin joined them, entrails spilling onto the road as they stood, fire taking their organs' places, beasts filled with flame.

The dead walked in daylight.

Eyes made of black fire scanned the area, the silent army pausing, inspecting their enemies. Kakashi almost got the impression they were smiling.

The Iwa-nin, their faces gray as curdled milk, sprang, hefting spears of hardened earth, a few coating themselves in stone.

The army made no sound, but simply spat fire in their direction, catching three of the Iwa-nin by surprise. Their clothes melded to their skin, their skin bubbled, their muscles boiled away, and they collapsed to the earth as burnt black skeletons-

Skeletons that, seconds later, pushed themselves upright and joined the fight, animated by fire.

And God, this power was terrifying- a perpetually growing army, an infection that consumed everyone on the battlefield and left them as nothing more than hosts for the Nekomata's power.

Screams filled the air, the clots of Iwa-nin heaving to and fro as they were surrounded, beaten down by poison and fire and lightning.

Kakashi would have vomited if he could spare the breath, but he had none- sweat rolled down his face, stung his eyes as he heaved the last barrel of powder into the cannon, blocking out the sound of screams.

The silent army grew as the number of Iwa-nin shrank, until there were ten left, fighting back-to-back as burning skeletons encircled them, pressed closer, the fires of the Nekomata twisting and twirling in the air, grotesque streamers that stank of rotting bodies, brought to mind maggots tunneling through dead flesh.

An Uchiha used a strange jutsu- one that made the Iwa-nin staring into those black eyes convulse, screaming, the sound prolonged and hoarse, as if the vocal chords were beginning to tear away from the larynx.

A copied spear of earth spitted another through the jaw and burst free through the top of the skull into daylight, trailing bits of bone and brain behind it.

And at last, the Iwa-nin fell.

It had only taken five minutes.

The dead stood in the middle of the road, silent, unmoving, bereft of anything to fight, fire twisting in the breeze.

The wind stirred, clouds of dust trailing over the road, drifting over the frightened horses that stared at the dead with wide eyes, ears pinned back, their nostrils flecked with foam.

Silence.

And one by one, the bones began to topple over each other, skeletons collapsing in on themselves, until the road was littered with the remnants of a once-proud Clan, once-strong shinobi.

Yugito lay in the middle of it all, her arms outflung, a bruise rising on her cheek from where one of the Iwa-nin had stepped on her in their panic, one of her hands ground into the dirt.

Kakashi leapt off the cart and raced to her, bones crunching beneath his feet as he knelt at her side. She was as cold as ice, and her head lolled as he turned her over, pressing two fingers to her neck.

Nothing.

He bit back the urge to scream.

Another comrade, fallen; another name for the memorial stone- he had failed once again.

He let her fall as he stood, the stench of the battlefield suddenly flooding his nose as he coughed. It never got any easier, that first, terrible urge to vomit.

He trudged to the horses and hacked apart their harnesses with his tanto, slapping each of them on the hip to get them to race into the forest. They escaped gladly, disappearing into the undergrowth, black tails floating like ribbons in the breeze.

Something moved behind him, and he spun.

What-

Yugito stood behind him, her face splattered with blood and dirt, her injured hand held close to her chest.

"I- what-" he started, shaking his head as if to make the hallucination disappear.

She lifted her lip in a familiar sneer that he couldn't even find annoying. "I only died for a little bit," she muttered, blood streaking her teeth red and bubbling over her lips, sliding down her chin. She tried to take a step towards him and paused as soon as her foot hit the ground, every muscle trembling.

Classic symptoms of chakra exhaustion.

"I need to sit down."

Kakashi grabbed her arms and carefully lowered her to the ground, where she sat among the dead like a child among toys, resting her forehead on her drawn-up knees.

"Anything you need?" he asked, crouching beside her.

"Something sugary to eat. A quiet place to rest for about six hours. Some way to detect Iwa-nin camouflaged in the earth would be nice, but not required," she slurred, raising her head to watch Kakashi root through his pack that he dragged from the undergrowth for a chocolate bar. He would have offered her an Akimichi energy pill, but she'd already shown her distrust of eating anything made by Konoha.

"Here."

She snatched it from his hand and devoured it in two bites, uncaring of the blood in her mouth or the tremors wracking her hands. The sugar wouldn't help her get all of her energy back, but it would be enough to get her away to a safe spot to rest.

"We need to go," Kakashi said. "Can you get into the underbrush over there?"

She squinted at him, looking drunk. "Kusarigama. Sword."

"I'll get them," he assured her, looping an arm around her shoulders- so thin the bones pressed into the inside of his arm- and hauling her upright.

She shook off his arm and stumbled into the forest on the side of the road, weaving drunkenly.

He only had a little while to get this done, before the terror and the nausea at the sight of the dead walking that he had forced to the back of his mind came screaming to the forefront and he was useless for a day.

He gathered her weapons, stowed them in his pack, and leaped up onto the wagon the cannon rested on, creating a last lightning clone and flinging himself off the wagon and hurtling into the forest as the clone climbed inside the barrel and slid down.

The explosion sounded like the end of the world.

* * *

**A/N:** Next chapter, Gaara begins his mission to stop the Suna incursion. However, he never expected to confront his siblings. All comments and criticism are loved.


	31. Chapter 31

_Couldn't save you from the start  
Love you so it hurts my soul  
Can you forgive me for trying again?  
Your silence makes me hold my breath_- 'Forgiven' by Within Temptation

* * *

Gaara's feet ached, dust coating his face, grinding against his teeth when he swallowed, itching in his nose when he breathed. Lee and Gai were on either side of him, their loud joking making him want to disappear into the forests and make his way to the Southern Front on his own.

But he couldn't, because he had to help them.

Because if they failed to delay Suna's forces, the main supply line to the Western Front would be cut in Suna's advance, and Riko had decreed that for Konoha to have any chance of survival, the supply line needed to survive for a while longer.

The thought of Riko made his stomach churn, the memory of their last conversation floating to the top of his thoughts, a terrible dark thing that made him ache down in his bones.

"_Riko?"_

_He entered her bedroom on quiet feet, eyes taking a few seconds to adjust to the darkness._

_For a moment, he wished they hadn't._

_Riko lay on her bed, spasming muscles leaving her contorted in some awful shape of sharp angles and twisted planes beneath the sheets. Her amber eyes flicked over to him, trembling lips curling in the adoring smile that made him simultaneously uncomfortable and consumed him with a fierce love._

_The room had the antiseptic scent of death._

_Her back was arched in a straining curve, one curled hand vibrating by her chin, and he took a seat by her side, carefully taking her hand between his, rubbing muscles that twitched like steel bands beneath his fingertips. _

"_How long?"_

_The question that held so much- how long until you leave me forever, how long have you been like this, how long since you've last been able to run-_

_But Riko understood him, like she always did, and a voice as dry and splintered as old bones hissed out of her contorted throat, "Fifteen minutes."_

_Gaara pressed his lips together, bowing his head over the small twisted hand that shuddered in his lap. Longer than it had been before. In a mere few months, she had lost almost everything._

_He hadn't known that the final decline would be so quick, had expected a long, gentle slide into the next world. _

_Not this headlong, wild leap into the dark._

"_Shinobu told me you decided to stop treatment," he observed, turning his face to hers, watching as her eyes drifted uncomprehendingly across his face. The world was fading around her, black clouds slowly encroaching on the edges of her vision as her brain unraveled itself, and soon sight and hearing and movement would be lost to her._

"_Yes."_

_Her fingers eased beneath his, and he fitted his fingers around her index and began to straighten it. _

"_Why?"_

_Her throat worked. "Because I have no control over any of this: the disease, the bijuu. I can't move when I wish. I can't… feed or bathe myself-" Gaara had taken over that role, his clumsy hands as gentle as he could make them as he washed her hair, "-or even choose what food I would like to have."_

_A rattling breath. _

"_But I _can_ choose when I go. That is the one thing I can choose for myself, the one bit of control I have over this disease." _

_Gaara didn't have the words to articulate what he felt: the clawing darkness that opened up in his belly and tore his breath away from him, the loss that burned behind his eyes in tears that would not fall, the sense of utter futility as he tried to accept her decision and couldn't._

"_Are you sure?" he finally managed, the words blistering his mouth as they left._

_Riko's lips twitched, her chest vibrating in what might have been a laugh. _

"_I'm sure." Her small body shuddered against his as another spasm wracked her, her head pressing back into the pillows as a groan slipped between her teeth, fingers crushing his hand as fury boiled inside him, but that fury could do nothing to save her._

_The spasm eased, and she fell back against the pillows again, dark hair black against the pristine white pillowcases, Gaara carefully straightening her bird-thin limbs while she was relaxed enough to allow him to do so._

_She smiled in his direction, saying, "I'm sure, because I'm tired of being in pain."_

_What could he say to that?_

_How could he possibly ask her to endure more of this, simply because he could not bear the thought of life without her?_

_How could he ask her to live because he loved her, when he could not even express that love?_

"_I'm going to the Southern Front in a few minutes," he said, and turned and carefully laid a kiss on her forehead, trying to communicate everything he could not utter. "But I wanted to say goodbye before I went."_

"_Okay," Riko said, and she turned her face against his to kiss his cheek, and her lips were as cold and dry as the desert wind at night. Gaara's hands clenched with the urge to hold her, to shield her from the disease that even now hummed inside her, but he could not, and so held as still as possible while she whispered, her voice a caress,_

"_I love you." _

_The reply strangled in his throat, and he pulled away, hating himself ever more with each second that ticked away in this dark room of a dying girl, and Riko's face grew paler and more still with each moment the expected reply went unspoken._

_He couldn't say it, couldn't lose her too-_

Damn him_, he couldn't say it!_

"_I-" they lodged once more, and he finished, lame and cowardly, "-know."_

_Riko's voice was very small, and very sad._

"_Why can't you love me, the way that I love you?"_

Gaara shook himself free of the clinging cobwebs of memory, returning to himself as the column of shinobi marched over a wooden bridge, the supply carts' wheels rattling. The carefully-crafted bracelet around his wrist needed charging, and he let some of his chakra flow into it. The seals- formed with ink mixed with a drop of Riko's blood- glowed blue, then subsided into blackness once more.

"What's that, Gaara-san?" He glanced up to find Lee hovering over him, lower lip thrust out in contemplation as he bounced along beside him, strange eyes fixed on the bracelet.

"It is part of my requirements to come on this campaign: a two-use teleportation scroll to take me to Riko's location and then back to wherever I left from in event of an emergency," he answered, shifting his pack on his shoulders and turning to glance at the long column of shinobi behind him. The few Kerumigakure shinobi, noticing his scrutiny, paled and avoided his gaze.

"Emerg-" There it went. "Ah," Lee said, softer now, the syrupy tones of pity coating his words. Gaara _hated_ pity, knew Riko would hate it too, if she were here. "It is because of Riko-san's… delicate condition, right?"

Gaara forced down a snappish response. It wouldn't do to antagonize the commanders of the expedition, even though he was only nominally under their authority. Plus, Naruto would give him that damnable _disappointed_ look when he heard, the one that made him want to offer to spend the rest of his life caring for war orphans with diseases if he would just _stop looking at him like that_.

"Yes. The jutsu is tied to her chakra levels through some extremely complicated method that I didn't catch. Jiraiya seemed excited about the seals, though."

"I always forget that Jiraiya's a master at seals," Lee said, before clapping his hand over his mouth, eyes comically wide. "But I've interrupted you- please continue!"

"So once her chakra levels drop below a certain threshold-" once she passed the point of no return- "-I will be automatically taken to her."

The next words were thick and cold, lodging in his throat as he spoke. "And once her chakra is gone completely, all I have to do is charge the bracelet once more for it to take me back to my starting location."

"It's a good idea," Lee agreed, gesturing for the column to take the right path at the fork. "I'm sure it gave her comfort to know that you'll be there when she needs you. Loyalty is, after all, one of the highest shinobi virtues!"

If Riko had been comforted by the bracelet's presence, she hadn't shown it.

"I'm so glad you're coming with us," Gai said, popping into the conversation, his teeth blinding in the brilliant noonday sun. "With you on our side, there's no way we can lose!"

"Agreed!" Lee chimed in, looking far too pleased for his own good.

"I am powerful," Gaara said, "but I'm not sure how suited my abilities will be to this mission. If they're smart, they'll stay on their side of the border where they have enough sand to launch large-scale attacks, but knowing my sister, she'll probably have ordered them to charge into the forests, where neither I nor them will be at an advantage."

Katashi's mission had been the exception, not the rule. His abilities were perfectly suited to his mission, and it'd be quite simple for him to fulfill it and race back home. No doubt he would be absolutely insufferable for weeks.

"I'm sure you will be a vital part of our strategy," Lee attempted to reassure him.

"Yes!" Gai backed him up.

Gaara ground his teeth together.

It was going to be a long month.

* * *

Gaara looked up from his latest sketch, done on the thick brown paper that some of their provisions had been wrapped in, as Lee slid down the tunnel into the small sand cavern he had excavated to keep their provisions cool.

"Hi," Lee said, sounding odd now that he wasn't talking like a hyperactive child.

"What's the situation?" Gaara asked, turning the drawing to get a better angle with his charcoal.

"Nothing terribly interesting," Lee said as he landed in the cavern. "About a third of us are on watch- well, not me, I just couldn't sleep. Nothing much is going on at the Suna camp, according to our last scout report three hours ago. And the water we're getting out of the well the others dug isn't very good, especially since we're on a salt flat. But never mind that; what are you drawing?" Lee's hair was tousled and sticking out in odd directions, his pajamas a blindingly bright shade of green that was muted in the dim light of the candles scattered around the edges of the round chamber.

"The salt flat above," Gaara answered, turning his chunk of charcoal in his hand and beginning to shade the outline of the moonlight on the plain. Lee perched on a box of dried rice at his side, leaning forward to see the drawing.

"Very impressive. But wouldn't it be better to, you know, actually be up there to see it?"

Small crosshatching to shade in the shadows of the tents…

"I wanted to try drawing a landscape solely from memory," he answered as he wiped his hand off on his black trousers. "I also do not want to subject the others to my presence."

Lee's brow quirked. "You make it sound like it's a hardship for them."

Gaara licked his thumb and smudged a line before looking up, meeting Lee's earnest gaze.

Why was he even down here?

"I'm not so naïve as to think that they want me around. The Konoha shinobi associate me with the Sound invasion that depleted their shinobi forces, while the Kerumigakure detachment connect me with Varg, whose bijuu burned the entire village to the ground and killed many of them when we escaped. And you…"

He shook his head, unaccountably irritated by Lee's illogicality. "You have more reason than any of them to despise me. I almost destroyed your chances of being a shinobi, not to mention I stood by and watched while Yugito burned the skin off your body. So why talk to me at all?"

Lee glanced down at the pale scar tissue covering the backs of his hands, Gaara following his gaze and feeling, for the first time, a twinge of guilt as he saw Lee flex his fingers, the motion sluggish and strained as it pulled against scar tissue.

"I never hated you for what you did in the Chuunin Exam," Lee said, looking up and shifting on the box. "You _were_ the better of the two of us, even if you did have an unfair advantage," he grinned.

_Advantage?_ Shukaku was an advantage?

Of course, intellectually, tactically, he had always known Shukaku to be a boon, but the price he paid- that he continued to pay- was too high for him to ever consider the bijuu worth it.

"As for what Nii-san did, well… she did what she thought she had to do to keep your quest going. If I hated you for not intervening, then I would have to hate Naruto as well, and even though he left us, I never hated him. I was disappointed, sure, and hurt, but never hateful.

"And even if I did hate you," Lee continued, "I would be willing to set that aside, because we need you to save Konoha, and my love for Konoha outweighs everything, even theoretical hatred. I'm sure that's what the shinobi that do dislike you feel as well."

This love for his country- love that outweighed hatred- was a foreign concept to Gaara. He had no attachment to the country of his birth, no attachment to the country he now fought for. His only allegiance was to his family: nothing so nebulous as an ideal or a nation.

Love was a powerful thing.

"I-" he began, only to pause, frowning.

Something was wrong, something prickling at the edges of his awareness.

"Gaara-san?" Lee snapped his mouth shut as Gaara held up a hand and closed his eyes, spreading his chakra deeper, further into the earth, past the cold, dry sensation of bedrock-

A long, thin tube-like chamber, a large one; he had known of its existence peripherally, but immediately dismissed it as an offshoot of a long-dead, crumbled magma conduit.

But offshoots didn't grow, as this one was, earth shifting, moving, his chakra flowing to accommodate the changes as a-

"Lee," he spoke without opening his eyes, realizing now the _cleverness _of their plan even as he damned himself for not realizing it.

"Yes, Gaara-san?"

The tunnel upwards was less than a mile from the surface, and when it reached Suna's forces- so many of them, the thunder of their sandals in the earth a cacophony in his skull, and now he realized why the Suna force they had seen in the camp seemed so small- would break free into the center of the camp-

"Lee!" Gai screamed from above, "they're coming!"

Yes, more thunder, this the roar of feet pounding in a charge across the plain-

"Yes, Gai-sensei!" Lee screamed back, bouncing to his feet and ripping open a crate of kunai, arming himself, "I'll be there immediately!"

"Lee," Gaara said, and something in his tone made Lee stop and turn, "they're coming from beneath. Six tunnels around the edges of the camp- at least three hundred shinobi per tunnel-"

Above, he heard the sound of battle, the shrill clang of the alarm bell-

"Collapse the tunnels!" Lee yelled as he leaped for the rope ladder and scrambled up it, disappearing from view.

"I can't," Gaara whispered to the emptiness. The tunnels lay too deep, their stone walls were too strong, and something big was coming from beneath, something heavy, inhuman-

A shrapnel cannon.

He pushed the drawing aside and rose through the sand above, emerging into chaos, his eyes burning, watering as a flashbomb exploded overhead and washed the color out of everything, except the oncoming tide of Suna shinobi, sprinting across the salt flats, howling, their curved scimitars flashing white in the moonlight.

Konoha shinobi stumbled out of their tents, some summoning hawks, wolves, a gigantic chameleon whose two eyes focused independently of each other, others yanking on their flak jackets.

He formed a sand clone and sent it slithering through the chaos to find Gai, to warn him of the attack from beneath, and yanked his pouch off his belt and opened it, tossing small shards of glass into the air.

They sparkled like diamonds in the moonlight, and he raised his hands, feeling thin strands of chakra connect with each, the shards humming, a thin high note that reverberated through his fingers, inside his bones, as he flicked his fingers, the shards moving with them.

The Konoha shinobi formed up, a circle around the camp, the rest haphazardly joining together into a line that sprinted towards the Suna force, the two waves meeting, crashing together in a roll of thunder over the plain, and from where he stood he saw only the Konoha shinobi's backs, the white faces of the Suna soldiers half-glimpsed, the blood spilling black and iridescent over the plains.

There was a howling, a high, shrieking sound like a sword on a whetstone, and a tornado formed from nothing in the midst of the two lines, cut through the barely-formed Konoha lines like a scythe through grain, the ones that weren't near the epicenter of the tornado flung back, a few of them hitting weak spots in the salt scum that covered the plain and breaking through, drowning in the boiling sulfurous sludge beneath. The Konoha shinobi wavered, broke, retreated to the circle around the camp where Gai was snapping out orders.

But now there was an opening in the lines-

His shards rocketed forward as he flung his arms in front of him, crossing them at the elbows, to pierce straight through the slim apertures in the Suna soldiers' helmets, blood pouring through the slits as he yanked them back with a curl of his fingers, striding forward.

The earth shook beneath his feet, but he, used to it because of Riko's seizures, stood where others fell, striding forward into the open space between the lines, alone beneath the stars.

He saw the recognition in their eyes, saw the fear once more-

How _dare_ they fear him? How dare they look at him like that, when he had spent the past six years caring for a girl that was destined to die, holding her as she vomited, combing her hair, feeding her, devoting endless hours to her even though he knew that it would only hurt him in the end, that there were no miracles on the horizon?

How _dare_ they look at him and see solely a killer, not a brother, not a friend, not something capable of more?

And something dark and bitter and vengeful took hold of him.

Hate.

He _hated_ them.

He felt his mouth curl, muscles contracting involuntarily, the smile of a kitsune, of a bijuu, of something that saw the forces of man arrayed against it and knew that they only existed because it allowed them to do so.

And he would no longer tolerate them, these blind fools who had known him for twelve long bloody years and had never seen him as anything other than a beast.

A beast they would have, then.

He tensed, uncrossed his arms, flung them out to his sides, alone, his shadow stretching to encompass them all as another flashbang poured light over the desert.

And the shards followed his directions, reversed their directions and arrowed to either side, the chakra strings shaking, thundering, a dissonant symphony as the shards hit bone, tore through it, sliced jugulars, burrowed through larynxes, his hands trembling, metacarpals vibrating so hard it seemed that they might shatter-

And then his hands stilled as the blood-soaked shards cut through the ends of the line and thudded into the sand.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The sound of liquid was loud in the sudden silence as red waterfalls opened up, one by one, spreading outward from the center of the front line, heads falling back, too far to be natural, vertebrae gleaming ivory as the entire line crumpled in mid-rush, collapsing where they stood, gore pumping out over the salt flat.

And the shinobi that came behind ran forward over the bodies of their dead.

He finally became aware of Gai's screams through the roaring of blood in his ears.

"Fall back! Goddamnit, fall _back!"_

The earth was shuddering beneath his feet, and he whirled, seeing the Konoha shinobi stumble out of the camp to form up on the other side as tents and tables and bedrolls rose into the air on a giant hillock of sand, the sound like the belly of some great beast, rumbling in hunger-

He dissolved in sand and rematerialized by Lee's side, someone's shoulder spinning him round as terrified Chuunin and Genin, some of them barely twelve, sprinted past him, running as the earth yawned, spewing boiling sludge and sharp plates of salt and sand into the air-

The noise was thunderous, the smell appalling, and as Gaara righted himself, turning, he saw the long, black arm of the shrapnel cannon break free of the hillock, reaching into the sky, blotting out the stars, shinobi, black and formless in the darkness, crawling out of the hole it made, knives clenched in their bared teeth.

Something was glowing inside the cannon's barrel, a red-orange like sunset, and Gaara's breath left him.

"_Get down!_" he roared, his order lost in the screech of half a ton of metal being propelled against the inside of the barrel, rocketing free into the sky-

He hadn't done this- had never needed to protect others-

His hands slammed onto the burning sands, and as the shrapnel shards completed their ascent and began to turn towards earth, gravity taking hold once more-

He ripped what small sand remained free of the salt's clinging hold, lofted it into the air, spread it over the eight hundred Konoha shinobi as best as he could, unable to breathe, to think-

Only able to coalesce that thousand tons of sand into a dome over them, as thick and strong as he could make it, to hear the surprised curses of shinobi-

The shrapnel arrowed towards earth, gleaming.

He would not let them impact, would not let these shinobi fall, because although he bore no love for them, Riko had asked this of him, and he would not fail her in this, the only thing he could do for her now.

Shrapnel hit the sand, and stuck, shuddering, as the other shards pierced the thinner edges.

Screams rose up in the darkness beneath the sand cloud.

Gaara's arms shook. He couldn't breathe, and a sharp-edged agony was digging into his lungs and hollowing them out. He bowed his head, even that small motion causing pain.

"Gaara…" Lee breathed beside him, staring up. "You did it." Pinpricks of moonlight dotted his face.

Gaara lifted his head, blinking sweat from his eyes, and pulled one hand away from the ground, more chakra- he could feel it, thin and weak- streaming from his fingers, catching hold of the sand cloud.

'_Come on._'

With a final gasp, he twisted his hand and shoved the cloud atop the gaping abyss in the middle of the camp. Moonlight poured over the Konoha shinobi once more, but he had no time to check on their conditions, no time to count the wounded and dying.

Shrapnel hung suspended in midair over the abyss, and snarling, the sound a dry rasp emerging from a parched throat, he let go.

Gravity pulled the metal blades downward, the shards piercing headbands, hastily-soldered-together helmets, pinning limbs to the earth and blowing skulls apart into red mist. The Suna shinobi faltered, stopped, and he could see his name come unwillingly to their lips.

"Go!" Gai shouted. Gaara didn't move as shinobi streamed past, the earth shaking beneath his hands, Lee hurling himself forward, leading the pack. The chameleon summon's tongue zipped out, curled around several Suna shinobi, and dragged them screaming into its mouth.

Grunting, he pushed himself onto his knees and knelt on the burning sand, trying to breathe. Medic-nin rushed around him, their hands soaked with blood from where his shield had been too thin, and long, low moans filled the air.

He had enough chakra left for one last blow, one that would hopefully be enough to force Suna to retreat, if only temporarily.

One of the Suna shinobi was loading a flashbomb into the cannon-

His gaze flew to the shinobi still pouring out of the abyss, engaging with the Konoha shinobi. It was a welter of bodies and blood, screaming and smoke-

But yes- dark glass goggles hung around the Suna shinobi's necks.

Sand raced to Gai's side, a mouth forming out of nothing, whispering, "Cover your eyes. Retreat."

Gai spun, foot slamming into a man's neck, a sickening crunching filling the air as the man's head slid three inches to the right, before dodging a wild swing and driving his elbow back into the woman's nose. Bone splintered, pierced the thin sheet of bone shielding the brain, tore into neurons.

She staggered and slid to the earth.

"You sure?" Gai panted.

"Yes."

Gai's eyes flickered, as if he was debating whether to trust him, before his jaw firmed and he nodded, hands slamming together into seals.

A giant turtle appeared from nothing beside Gai, its voice a deep bass rumble that carried over the noise,

"Retreat! Cover your eyes!"

The Konoha shinobi, soldiers to the end, obeyed, turning, running, even though they were showing their vulnerable backs to the enemy. Many only lived long enough to regret it, swords and spears gutting them, and fell.

As the survivors thundered past Gaara, he levered himself to his feet, unable even to groan with pain.

No time to create the Sand Eye-

Lee and Gai were the last to go by him, Lee skidding to a stop and turning, taking up a position at his side.

Gaara didn't even spare him a glance, every fiber in his being fixed on the cannon, watching, waiting.

"Cover your eyes," he rasped as the cannon roared once more, a gray sphere flying into the sky, tumbling, end over end, before bursting apart.

"Gaara!" Lee screamed, a hand landing heavy on his shoulder, but Gaara shoved him back and down, watching the shell continue its arc.

He closed his eyes.

It was strangely silent, the explosion, but the terrible, cold light that poured over the plain, made Gaara's eyes burn even through his closed eyelids, more than made up for it.

He had to open his eyes.

It was the hardest thing he had ever done, to push past every instinct in him that screamed to leave them closed-

He opened them and stared into hell, involuntary tears streaming down his cheeks, a lancing agony hammering through his skull- thought was torn from him, and all he knew was pain.

Hundreds of black dots were growing larger and larger-

The goggles.

Roaring, he cast out his chakra, felt the strands snap to every lens, and-

He clenched his fist.

Hundreds of glass lenses shattered, and screams rose up over the salt flats as the oncoming charge stumbled, halted, and broke apart into hundreds of writhing men and women clawing at their eyes, blood streaming from between their fingers, splashing red, the only color in the whiteness.

The light faded enough for him to see two figures emerge from the hole.

A woman, tall and bronze, her sandy hair tied into four pigtails, her mouth twisted in a snarl, purple fan slung across her back in a half-remembered pose.

A man, face marked with purple lines, his eyes wide, hand outstretched, pointing at him, the puppet at his side gazing at him with three glittering eyes.

Gaara almost smiled-

But then the world went away, shrinking into a tiny bright dot that was swallowed up in darkness as black as Shukaku's heart, and he sank into a gray, drifting twilight.

* * *

His arm was burning, and someone's hand was on his shoulder.

Groaning, he reached up to slap away the unwanted touch, only to have his hand seized, a voice calling,

"Lee! He's back!"

Gaara eased his eyes open, blinking away the grittiness, His stomach chose that moment to make itself known, an empty, gnawing hunger that jabbed into his spine and made him hiss.

"Gaara!" Lee bounded into the tent like an overexcited dog, skidding to a stop by his cot. "I see they finally got the stimulant needle in."

Gaara quirked a brow, his throat too parched to speak.

"They couldn't get the first ten past the sand armor, so now we have a bunch of bent syringes laying around."

"Waste of good needles," the medic muttered, placing a glass of water on the table by the cot and leaving the tent in a huff.

Gaara picked up the glass, annoyed by how his hand shook, and took a sip of lukewarm water, swishing it around his mouth. It tasted like death.

"Status?" he finally croaked.

Lee hooked his foot around a camp chair and dragged it closer, plopping down and punching the air as he spoke, unable to sit still. "You've been out for two days. Did you just use up all your chakra?"

Gaara grabbed the bowl of unpalatable gruel on the table and attacked it, only pausing in his shoveling of the food into his mouth to say, "I'm not used to performing large maneuvers like the three I did in the battle. My bijuu and chakra levels are more suited to small-scale, precise attacks against individuals, not large masses. It was only luck that I was able to do all three of those maneuvers one after the other."

"That makes sense," Lee said, before rushing onward, "All casualty reports say seventy of ours died outright, and about forty are too injured to go back into combat. After you smashed all the Suna guys' goggles, we used the time they were all trying to reorganize to beat a retreat."

"How far back are we?"

"About three miles from the edge of the salt flat. The Suna shinobi are holed up in their camp; all reports say they're waiting for reinforcements, since you pretty much blinded like a third of their forces here."

Wonderful.

"How long until the reinforcements arrive?"

Lee shrugged, picking up a paperweight and tossing it from hand to hand. "The Kerumigakure spies returned from doing a sweep not too long ago, and they're still working on the calculations, but I think it'll be about a week, week and a half."

Gaara's lip twitched.

The odds were going to be even more stacked against them. He finished his gruel and shoved it aside, reaching for his accoutrements on the table and buckling them onto his belt.

Finishing, Gaara struggled upright and swung his legs off the cot to sit on the edge, waving off Lee's offered hand. "And Temari and Kankuro?"

"Um…" Lee shifted, "they've actually sent an emissary to us. They want to talk to you."

Gaara frowned and looked down at his hands, watching sand ripple over his skin. Why would they want to talk to him? It wasn't as if cultivating a relationship with him had ever been high on their priority lists.

"Where would we meet?" he finally asked, for lack of anything better to say.

"They'd set up a neutral tent on the salt flat," Lee answered. "And neither one of you would be able to bring a bodyguard or weapons."

Gaara snorted. "If they think I'm removing my sand armor for this, they're sadly mistaken."

Lee said nothing, but he could feel him vibrating, skin itching where Lee's hopeful gaze bored into it.

"You want me to go meet with them, don't you?" Gaara said, amused by Lee's visible surprise at how transparent he had been. The other man wore his heart on his face, always had, and somehow that transparency was refreshing.

"Well. Um, yeah." Lee fidgeted, tossing the paperweight back onto the table with a bang. "If you could stall them, that would be great, since the supply line hasn't finished moving yet. And don't you _want_ to see your siblings?"

Gaara shoved his arms into his jacket and stomped his feet into his boots, glancing at Lee. "You seem to think I consider them to be my siblings."

Lee's look of horror was so blatant that Gaara almost smiled. "I don't want to offend you," Lee blurted, waving his hands in the air, as if that would do anything if Gaara did attack, "but I don't understand. I have five siblings, myself, and the idea that…" he trailed off, shaking his head.

Yes, Gaara's relationships with Temari and Kankuro weren't normal, but they had never been. "We never spent much time together even before," Gaara said as he pushed himself upright, swaying as the still-novel sensation of pain- warm and somehow wet- welled up inside him.

Every joint in his body ached like they had been filled with ground glass.

Chakra exhaustion, and when he concentrated he could feel Shukaku pacing inside him, trying to generate more chakra, to protect itself by protecting him.

"I lived with a different family member, while they stayed at our father's house and were cared for by women from the village."

Why was he even telling Lee this? There was no reason for him to be so forthcoming to anyone outside the jinchuuriki, but somehow Lee's openness and attempts to… befriend him, he supposed, were inspiring him to reciprocate.

He didn't understand.

Grinding his teeth, he pushed the mosquito netting draping the entrance to the tent aside and emerged into the camp. The sky was the dull gray of unpolished iron, and the humidity curled itself around him like Varg's hand around Moriko's.

The silence made the hairs rise on the back of his neck. No sound but for the soft sighing of wind, the low rumbles of conversations, no signs of life but the deliberate motions of hollow-eyed sentries. Everyone lay around the camp in various stages of exhaustion, two newly-minted Chuunin, younger than he was at his first Chuunin exam, draped over each other in the shadow of the infirmary tent, their eyes and noses still red.

"They lost their squad mate," Lee informed him quietly, before stiffening, eyes going to something over Gaara's shoulder.

A familiar chakra-

Gaara turned his head just enough to see the scarred, half-remembered face out of the corner of his eye.

"Baki," he acknowledged, turning around to see him, folding his arms across his chest.

He deliberately left off the 'sensei.' Baki had never had anything to teach him. The older man looked much the same- the gangrene scars on his face remained covered, although there were fresh wounds pocking the skin around his visible eye.

Gaara smiled, the expression pinched and mechanical, a sickening vestige of emotion.

"I see my technique needs refining."

Baki did an admirable job of not flinching, but Gaara, used to all the permutations of fear, saw it nonetheless.

"The Kazekage's emissary wishes to meet with you."

Kankuro, then.

"And the Kazekage herself?"

Baki's lip curled as he drew himself upright, radiating disdain. Gaara was unaffected; this man was nowhere near Yugito's level of prowess when it came to disdain for humanity.

"The Kazekage refuses to consort with, quote, blood traitors," Baki recited.

Lee gasped, but Gaara only stared at Baki, expressionless. Why should he care what Temari thought? Her opinion had never mattered to him as a child, and that was one of the few things that hadn't changed over the years.

'_I suppose we truly are dysfunctional._'

"Very well. Give me the coordinates for the meeting."

Baki fished out a folded scrap of paper and handed it to Gaara with a mocking bow. "The emissary is already waiting."

Gaara's lip twitched at their presumptuousness, but he said nothing, only watched as Baki was escorted from the camp by glowering sentries, his former instructor's hand lifting in a lazy wave.

"Lee," he murmured, glancing down at the coordinates.

The green-suited shinobi edged out from behind him, looking…

Looking righteously furious on his behalf.

It was a look that he had only seen on the other jinchuuriki's faces before.

Choosing not to analyze it, he said, "I will return no later than three hours from now," and dissolved into sand.

* * *

He came back to himself outside a pavilion, the heavy canvas cloth emblazoned with a sheathed kunai, the universal shinobi symbol for neutral ground. A table, surrounded by cushions, was laid out in the center of the unrolled mats, a pot of tea steaming in the middle.

Tea- a sign of friendship and affection in Suna.

Perhaps Kankuro was looking to draw Gaara back to Suna?

And there he was.

He stood with his back to Gaara on the other side of the pavilion, his hood down, and as he felt Gaara's scrutiny his shoulders tensed beneath the black cloth of his suit.

Gaara's skin prickled, but he said nothing, waiting, and after a long moment Kankuro heaved a sigh and turned, gaze settling on Gaara's face, his lips twitching in a tired smile.

"Hey."

"Hello," Gaara said, entering the shade and seating himself on one side of the table.

Kankuro looked well, from what little he knew of how men of that age were supposed to look. He was thinner, his paint more elaborate, and he moved with a solemn stillness that was anathema to what he remembered him being like.

Kankuro's scrutiny made him tense, biting back a snarl, his brother's eyes flickering over him, pausing momentarily at the bags of glass powder and shards arrayed on his belt while he eased himself into a seat on the other side of the table.

They sat in silence as Kankuro puttered about with the teapot, pouring two cups and offering one, cupped in both hands, to Gaara, who took it with the same solemnity, raising it to his lips. They met each other's eyes and took a sip at the same moment.

It was hot, sweet, tinged with jasmine and cinnamon. Normally, Gaara would never have taken anything offered by someone who was not one of the jinchuuriki, but the idea of poisoning tea offered as a sign of peace was so anathema to the people of Suna that he was comfortable with drinking it.

In silence, listening to the wind outside the tent, they finished their tea and set the cups aside.

Ritual completed, the negotiations could at last begin.

"So, uh… how've you been?" Kankuro finally said, his hands twitching with the urge to fidget.

"Well enough," Gaara answered, folding his arms across his chest.

They made asinine small talk for a few minutes, Gaara informing Kankuro of the other jinchuuriki, of the Village in the jungle, while Kankuro spoke of all the happenings in Suna that Gaara didn't give a damn about. Why should he care if Baki was married, or Temari was engaged? Kankuro showed him a picture of Temari, and he made the appropriate noises of appreciation.

Growing tired of dancing around the issue at hand, he finally said,

"What is the purpose of this meeting?"

Kankuro frowned, shifting in his seat. "What, I can't just want to catch up with my little brother?"

"I doubt you would call me out here for a social visit. Socializing with me was never part of your priorities."

Kankuro sighed- good, Gaara wanted him annoyed, and even if it was petty, he didn't care- and leaned back, planting a hand in the sand.

"The Kazekage wants me to convince you to either become neutral or come back to Suna, the latter being more preferable, of course."

Like that was ever going to happen, when he had everyone he cared for, everything he needed in Konoha.

"The Kazekage…" he mused, drumming his fingers on the table. "Why is Temari now the Kazekage? Was Father finally usurped? I'd imagine it came as a surprise-" his lips twitched in an attempt at a smile, "-since she was always his favorite."

"What?" Kankuro shook his head, staring at him as if he had never seen him before in his life. "You… you really don't know, do you?"

"In case it escaped your notice, I spent the past six years in the jungle," Gaara retorted. "That doesn't tend to facilitate communication with the outside world."

Kankuro shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. "Yeah, okay." He blinked, taking a deep breath, and said as flatly as he could,

"Dad's… Dad's _dead_, Gaara." He blinked again, throat bobbing, and continued, "He died before the invasion attempt on Konoha. The Dad we thought was on the trip with us was actually Orochimaru."

Shouldn't he feel something more at the news of the death of his father? Something more than this dull, quiet satisfaction that the man had gotten what was coming to him?

Wasn't he supposed to grieve?

"I see. What killed him?"

Kankuro's brow furrowed. "I don't know why you want to know, but it was snakebite."

Why wouldn't he want to know? Why wouldn't he want to picture the man who had destroyed all hope for normality, for being part of humanity, strangling, dying, finally understanding that he was powerless?

"Hm."

"Yeah…" Kankuro said, scratching his stubbled chin. "Look, I get that the other jinchuuriki are fighting for Konoha, but listen- you don't have to fight against them. Just become neutral, and we can both go home happy. But I really do want you to come back to Suna with us."

He did?

"Why?"

"'Why?'" Kankuro echoed, dumbstruck. "Because- well, because you're our _brother!_ And sure, Temari will be pissed at you, but it won't last- just come back-"

"I am not," Gaara whispered, cold and clear as ice, "your brother any longer."

"_Goddamnit_, Gaara!" Kankuro roared, flinging his hands in the air as he leaped up from the table. "You have _never_- not for one single moment- stopped being our brother." He turned, heel digging into the sand, and paced around him, fingers curled into fists. Gaara could smell blood seeping from where Kankuro's nails dug into his palms, and felt Shukaku stir inside him at the scent.

"I was never your brother," he said. "You were afraid of me. You never loved me." Half-forgotten memories of childhood, stuffed into the same dark, cold box that held all his memories of Yashamaru, awakened, and that empty, gnawing _hunger _for affection he had felt every hour of every day as a child returned, the agony of it like a physical blow.

"Love and fear aren't mutually exclusive, you dick!" Kankuro whirled to face him, eyes burning with emotion. "Love isn't a switch I can turn off and on; I was afraid of you, yeah, because you killed people and never slept and kept telling me that you wanted to kill me, but that _never_ meant that I didn't love you."

His voice cracked. "You're my _brother_. I used to stand over your crib at night and watch you lie there and stare back at me, and even if I was scared, I still loved you, because you were family. I still love Temari, even though she's leading us into a war that I don't think we can win."

"You are correct in that assumption."

"Don't you get it? We always loved you. Do you have _any idea_ how we felt, coming into the forest and finding that you were just… _gone?_ I mean, think about this… Riko. If she disappeared on you one day, and you had no idea where she had gone, and she never even _tried_ to contact to you- wouldn't that worry you?"

"She would never leave us," Gaara said, eminently logical. "We are the only family she has, the only ones who have a hope of understanding her mentality and physical issues. And even if she did leave, there would be no place on this earth we would not find her."

Kankuro jammed his eyelids shut, raking his fingers through his hair. "We tried to find you," he whispered, "but you wouldn't let us. And then Temari became Kazekage, and we thought that would help us find you, but then Konoha started killing our soldiers, and they started trying to annex us. So Temari and the Council decided we had to go to war. And I was fine with this, but then the news got out that Konoha had you guys on their side."

"And no matter how hard I tried to make her understand that we can't beat you, she just… wouldn't give up."

"Of course she won't," Gaara said. "She's not herself. She's trapped in a genjutsu."

Kankuro's head snapped up. "A genjutsu?" he repeated, brow quirking. "Why would you say that?"

"This war is not the natural outgrowth of differing goals between countries," Gaara said. "For the past several years, all five of the Great Nations have been content with the status quo. They have no reason to suddenly launch a war against Konoha, even though Konoha has apparently killed their soldiers. Most small border skirmishes don't lead to wars."

"It was extremely sudden," Kankuro agreed, his eyes narrowing.

"And Temari is smart, from what I remember of her. And stubborn, but not so stubborn as to be blind to the futility of this war. So are the other Kages."

"The genjutsu is an insidious one. It was placed on the Kages, and slowly warps their worldview, forcing them to discount entirely the idea of _not_ going to war. They could be staring straight at evidence that they were being manipulated, and wouldn't believe it."

"What about the bodies of our soldiers? They were killed by Konoha's techniques-"

"Manufactured to get the populace to support the war."

Kankuro shook his head, grinning. "Okay. So say that this is true and somebody's managing to hold a genjutsu on four Kages without tipping anybody off.

"_Why?_ Nobody's benefiting by getting into a war, least of all Konoha. And sure, if Konoha falls, we'll divvy up their land and territories, especially since they have the best farmland. And dividing it up wouldn't be a favorable outcome, since all of us would lose potential spoils. It just doesn't make any sense."

"The group creating this genjutsu is known as Akatsuki."

"Akatsuki?" Kankuro frowned, scratching his chin. "Aren't they some kind of terrorist organization? Why would they want to upset the status quo?"

"Because they needed the jinchuuriki."

Kankuro's lips pressed into a thin line. "You? Why?"

Gaara lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "We don't know what their aim is, just that it apparently requires our deaths to complete."

Kankuro laughed, looking around, as if to find someone to share his incredulity with.

"You expect me to _believe_ this bullshit? You expect me to believe some random terrorist organization can hold a genjutsu on four Kages that's so specific that it only forces them to do one thing, and so subtle that no one can tell it's there, all to accomplish some vague aim that no one knows exactly what it is?"

"I'd think you'd be happy to have an explanation for Temari's stubborness," Gaara noted.

Kankuro rolled his eyes. "I'm pragmatic, Gaara, and if there's one thing I've learned from my intelligence specialists, it's that the simplest answer is usually correct. What's more simple and realistic: a crazy genjutsu on Temari and all of the other Kages with no real point, or Temari and the Council just being stubborn bitches?

"I'm sorry, but I think your theory's fucked. There are too many holes and too much ambiguity for me to give any thought to it," Kankuro said. Gaara inclined his head in a slow nod; even though he didn't agree with Kankuro's decision- knew that it could only lead to ruin-, he could at least respect his honesty.

And he had no proof of his allegations, nothing that could inspire Kankuro to believe him over the sister he had loved so dearly for so many years.

"Fair enough."

Kankuro bit his lip, asking again, childlike hope shining on his face that somehow this answer would be different,

"So you won't come back for us?"

Gaara shook his head, feeling some small inkling of regret for the way Kankuro's face crumpled, for the deep black chasm between them that couldn't be crossed.

Too much time had passed. Too many chances had been lost. And perhaps it had to end this way- perhaps he had been destined to born a jinchuuriki, leave his family for a new one- but it didn't change the fact that somehow the look of devastation on Kankuro's face made something in him urge him to rescind his actions.

Kankuro rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, shoulders shaking once, twice, a long, tired sigh leaving his lips, before he looked up and said, his voice businesslike, drained of all life,

"If you can't come back for us, can't you come back for Suna?"

"Suna?" Gaara sneered. "Why would I return to Suna, to a place I was never wanted?"

Kankuro's face twisted in some instinctual revulsion at his lack of patriotism.

"Because Suna needs you. It's your homeland! There are a thousand men lying out there that died for their homelands; why can't you understand that?" Kankuro said in a fierce, urgent whisper, his face pale beneath the makeup.

"Because they died for dirt. And you may have been born on it, and lived on it, and your ancestors may have died on it back to the thousandth generation before you, but it's just dirt.

And I'm not foolish enough to give up everything for it."

Kankuro blinked, his eyes glossy with some emotion Gaara couldn't even try to name. "It's home."

Home? Home was a place where one felt accepted, loved, appreciated for all that they were. Home had never been a place-

Home was eight people. Home was the jinchuuriki.

Kankuro, sensing that he was losing him, shook his head and leaned forward, pressing on, "If you can't come home for patriotism, what about all the future generations of Suna, the children who will be born, that you can save?"

Future generations? A possibility?

"I fail to see the point of dying for an intangible ideal. Possibilities, patriotism- these things mean nothing to me."

"How can you not understand patriotism?" Kankuro demanded, slamming his fist on the table.

"Because there is no reason to die for a set of traditions and a plot of earth. And if you believe nothing else I say, believe this: if you come to Konoha, you _will_ die."

Kankuro rested his head in his hands, and something in Gaara, some long-dead spark of familial loyalty, flared to life, making him offer, grudging, slow,

"If you and your men wish to live, you can defect."

Kankuro's head snapped up, the twisted look of outrage and pain on his face making Gaara pause. Kankuro smiled, a broken, terrible thing, and shook his head with a choked sob.

"I can't defect," Kankuro whispered in a wretched, wet voice. "Suna is my home, and I'll do whatever I can to save it- even fight in this war that Temari has made."

Gaara looked down at the picture of Temari on the table, gilded by evening light. She was smiling, her eyes alight, her smile full of humor, and he felt nothing for her but a vague sense of pity-

For she was an unwitting pawn in a war of giants.

"Kankuro."

His brother looked up, startled by the sudden softening of his tone. "Yeah?"

"What do you love more, Suna or Temari?"

He almost felt sorrow for what he was about to do.

"I-" Kankuro stared at him, open-mouthed. "I- I don't even know how I'm supposed to answer that question, Gaara! There's different kinds of love-"

"Value, then."

Kankuro shook his head, fingers tight on the edge of the table, the teacup nearest his hands vibrating with the motions. "I would die for Suna in a heartbeat, and I would die to free Temari from any genjutsu, because she is Suna's leader. I love my country more than life itself. But-" he raked his hands through his hair, "again, you can't measure them against each other, they're totally different!"

Gaara smiled internally, and sprung the trap.

"Temari will not give up the position of Kazekage willingly, nor will the people of Suna let her. But as long as she remains Kazekage, she will continue to lead Suna into a war that cannot be won."

"With Temari at your head, you may be able to mow down the forces of Konoha. Perhaps, with luck and cunning, you will even make it to the gates.

And there, you will meet the jinchuuriki."

Gaara leaned over the table, his voice flat. "I can tear a hundred people's throats out in mere seconds, blind three hundred in a minute. And Shukaku only has one tail."

Kankuro swallowed.

"If you are willing to face the walking dead, then come. If you think you can overcome the sea and the earth, then press on. If the power of lightning and poison doesn't frighten you, then fight to Konoha's walls. If having every single one of your shinobi no longer be sure of what is real and what is illusion makes you laugh, then walk on. If you don't mind the idea of facing demons living in your own shadows and a kitsune whose steps crack the earth, then feel free to continue-

_And we will_ _grind Suna into the dust._"

Kankuro's mouth opened and closed, but he had no words. Gaara sat back, shrugging.

"Suna has no chance of survival if it continues. And as long as Temari remains Kazekage, she will press on to Konoha, and we will obliterate Suna from the face of the earth."

"Temari will never relinquish the position of Kazekage as long as she lives," Kankuro finally said in a strangled whisper.

Gaara's mouth twitched into a spare smile. "No. She won't. But Konoha doesn't possess the capability to get anyone into her inner circle to assassinate her and save Suna."

A long, terrible silence, the sound of the wind like the moaning of wounded. Kankuro studied Gaara's face, and his eyes filled with tears. He swallowed, and looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. "I can't make this choice," he said, and his voice was as hollow as the grave.

"I'm not asking you to. But as long as Temari remains Kazekage, with or without the genjutsu, Suna will die."

"I-"

"Answer one question for me," Gaara cut him off.

Kankuro closed his eyes. "Okay."

"Do you love Suna enough to become its greatest villain? To go down in history, vilified by those you love, jeered at by those you hate? Are you willing to commit the worst sin for the best reasons, and never have the truth of what you've done be known?"

Tears slipped out from beneath Kankuro's closed eyelids, glistening in the light.

Gaara delivered the finishing blow.

"You say you're a patriot." His mouth twisted in a smile. "Then show me the meaning of patriotism."

A heavy, bitter sob tore itself out of Kankuro's mouth as he curled into himself, rocking on the cushions.

The seed was planted. All that was left to do was see if it bloomed.

Gaara stood, turned on his heel, and left.

And as he walked out of the tent, and away from the brother he had manipulated, away from all hope of reconciliation with the land and the people that bore him-

He felt nothing.

* * *

**A/N: **All comments and criticism are cherished, and don't forget to check out the fanart linked in my profile!


	32. Chapter 32

**A/N: **Thanks go out to JediClaire, for reminding me that this chapter should be dedicated to Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, who died on July 25th and 18th, respectively. Henry Allingham was the last remaining founding member of the RAF and one of two remaining British veterans of the Great War. Harry Patch was for seven days the last British Tommy, the last person in the world who remembered the horrors of trench warfare.

The greatest generation of Britain is gone.

- - -

_Some mother's son lies in a field  
Someone has killed some mother's son today  
Head blown up by some soldier's gun  
While all the mothers stand and wait  
Some mother's son ain't coming home today._

'Some Mother's Son' by the Kinks

- - -

The ground shook beneath Naruto's feet as the great gates in the eastern wall clanged shut, the swirling crowds of sluggish refugees and haggard civilians not slowing, the overcast sky mirroring Naruto's mood as he stood there, too worn down to even think about what he should do next, too tired to move. A gentle hand insinuated itself in his sleeve and tugged, and he went, grateful for the direction.

Grateful for the chance not to think.

Hinata led him to the shadows of a makeshift barrier, empty boxes heaped high forming the obstruction. Kiba, Akamaru, and Shino were already there, Shino's arm bulky with bandages inside the baggy sleeves of his coat.

"W-we're sup- supposed to report to debriefing," said Hinata, letting go of his sleeve and peering up at him, hands twitching as if she itched to throw her arms around his shoulders and offer comfort.

He wasn't interested in comfort right now.

"I-" the words felt odd, scraping out of a throat rusted with tears, "I can't go. I need to-" he gestured, trying to encompass the enormity of the task that stood before him, "-to let the others know. Because I can't let them find out from somebody else."

There would be no ravens tapping on their windowsill.

"Okay," Kiba said, and Naruto wondered at the sympathy he could hear. "Do you know if he had an ID number, or if he created a will?"

"I don't know about the number; I wasn't assigned one, so I don't think he has- had one." Naruto scratched at one of the insect bites speckling his forearm, remembering Katashi hunched over the forms in the evenings, "He made a will, though. We all did. It's one of those form ones that all the shinobi fill out, you know, that come on yellow paper? And you're supposed to update them every year?"

"Yes," Shino said, shifting his pack on his back and settling his sprained arm back against his chest. "We'll have them send someone by with it later."

They all seemed to be speaking from very far away, their words glancing off the shell he had built around himself, and he found it difficult- nearly impossible- to care about what they said, the trite platitudes they mouthed.

Because they didn't know Katashi, like he did, like the others did. They couldn't understand the gaping hollowness inside, the drumbeat of _your fault, your fault, your fault_ inside him.

"Okay."

Hinata and Kiba nodded, shook his hand- why?- and turned, heading for the Hokage Tower in the distance. Shino lingered, chewing his lower lip, then blurted,

"Tell Shinobu that I'll be here if she needs me."

A smile flickered on Naruto's face at the confirmation that Shino was a good man, the right man for Shinobu, and he nodded. The angle of Shino's collar changed, and he thought the other boy might be smiling, but then Shino spun on his heel and darted after Hinata and Kiba, leaving him alone in the shadows of the barricade.

Alone with the knowledge that Katashi was dead.

He had to tell them.

He turned, and dragged himself towards the apartment building, passing makeshift hospitals, empty shops turned into weapon-smithies, past the deep wells that Riko had dug. The crowds parted as he trudged through them, and if any of them spoke to him, he didn't hear it.

He wished it would rain, wondered what Katashi's will would look like. Wondered if Katashi had ever decided who would get his stores of rancid canned food- 'for an emergency,' he had insisted, even though the emergency, the chances of starving again, were non-existent- and the bright red glop he had made out of cornstarch, food dye, and water and stuck on Noboru's books.

Sweat was encrusted on him, burning the hundreds of small cuts and abrasions on his skin, and he probably didn't smell too good, either. And as he reached their apartment building, hauled one of the old glass doors open, and entered, he wondered if Katashi's name would go on the memorial stone.

He climbed the stairs, trudged down the hallway, fishing out his keys as he went.

Katashi would never walk through this door, or any door, beside him again, and overwhelmed by the enormity of it all, he pressed his forehead against the cold wood and breathed, trying to choke back the gasping sobs that clawed their way up his throat.

He could hear music from inside, could hear Shinobu humming.

Oh, God.

This was going to kill Shinobu.

He forced his hand upright and slid the key into the lock in a rasp of metal against metal, the sound of earth closing over his brother's body.

He went in, nudging the door shut behind him with his foot. Shinobu looked up at him from where she was sitting cross-legged before the coffee table, doing calligraphy, her face splitting in a wide grin- a grin that he hated himself for destroying.

"You're back!" She sprang to her feet and swooped down on him, enfolding him in a crushing embrace. Moriko's dark head popped over the back of the couch, the small girl's grin gap-toothed as she yelled,

"Naruto! Naruto!"

Naruto returned Shinobu's embrace without thinking, pulling away as soon as her grip loosened to look around the living room, at the knick-knacks scattered on the mantel and the carvings and glass sculptures perched on every flat bit of shelving. At Katashi's teeth, carved into art by Varg, and he knew there would never be any more of them.

"Where is everyone?"

Shinobu bounced over to the couch and took a seat by Moriko, beginning to gather up her calligraphy materials. "Gaara's still out on his mission. Noboru's at the Academy, Riko's at the Hokage Tower, and Yugito's taking a nap in her room. She just got back from her mission with Hatake-san late last night. Varg's with that Neji Hyuuga kid and his team: they've been working together to try to find a way to communicate with Varg that doesn't require speech."

She snapped her case shut and looked up at Naruto, and Naruto's chest ached for what he was about to do. "How was your mission?"

"Katashi-" his tongue was thick and numb, resisting every attempt he made to say it, to let her know, but he soldiered on.

And oh, _God_, he could see it, could see the light flicker and dim in her eyes, could see her lungs seizing in her chest, the way she flinched backwards as if the words themselves were battering at her face the way they battered at her heart,

"-Katashi died," he forced out, and let the broken sword- light and useless, unable even to save Katashi's life- slide off his shoulders into his hands. He held it out, cold as the grave. '_Please, let her take it_,' he thought, because he didn't want the burden of carrying the thing Katashi loved any longer.

"I-" Shinobu shook her head, blinking hard, one, two, three times, "-when? Wh- _how?_" And her words cracked and broke apart into sobs.

He didn't know how to say it, how to express the sick dark emptiness that was the sight of Katashi's eyes clouding over as he held him, the feeling of bone fragments grinding against each other with every minute shift of his hands, the sound that was Katashi begging to be let go.

Tears were already streaming down over Shinobu's cheeks as she sniffled, wiping at her bright red nose with the sleeve of her scrubs, and Naruto didn't know what to say.

"It was… about a week ago, I guess: Friday, maybe, or Saturday." Time had ceased to matter in that long terrible slog back from the coast, only being important in that while he was sleeping, he didn't see Katashi bleeding out in his arms, knowing that it was his fault he was dying. He laid the sword aside on the coffee table, and continued, "It was Akatsuki. One of them had a jutsu or something that allowed him to injure himself, and then all of those injuries would pass to Katashi."

Shinobu fell onto the ottoman of Noboru's easy chair, her sobs- stuttering, abortive gasps for air- tearing at Naruto's heart. "So he crushed his own chest, and killed Katashi."

He turned to Moriko, saw her green eyes regarding him, her teeth digging into her finger, face pale and still. She said nothing, and even as Shinobu reached out, drew her close to muffle her sobs in Moriko's dark hair, Moriko stared back at him without a word.

Her silence tore into him.

'_I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough. I'm sorry I couldn't save your big brother._'

Shinobu keened, a thin, high-pitched sound that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, as she rocked back and forth, her tears dripping into Moriko's hair, Moriko's thin, almost-translucent hand curling in Shinobu's sleeve, the clock ticking away the minutes above them.

Minutes that would never have Katashi in them again.

Naruto swallowed, and perched on the couch beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder. He had never seen her cry, had never seen her be anything but the sturdy rock that bore them all up, the one who listened to all of their problems , who fixed their scrapes and intervened in their fights.

And he didn't know how to deal with it, with seeing his rock, his older sister, so totally broken.

But he knew that it frightened him.

She stiffened at his touch, her eyes flickering open, still wet behind her tear-speckled glasses as she sat up. He didn't know what to say, but found that he didn't need to say anything, her voice thick as she said,

"Where was he interned?"

Oh. She was going to bury her grief in work, then.

"We buried him on the headland where he died, about thirty miles south of the fishing village of Hirakawa." High above the sea he loved, so that the waves would sing to him and the moon would watch over what remained of him, lying in the earth, his soul- and although Naruto considered himself mostly agnostic, this he believed with all his heart- now free from pain.

"D-did he ever say anything to you, about where he wanted to be buried?"

No. He had believed himself invincible, like all young people.

He shook his head, Shinobu's voice flat as she said, "We'll need to get his will."

"Shino and the others are getting it from the Tower right now," Naruto said, biting back his fear as Shinobu's face remained placid and unchanging, even at the mention of the man she loved.

"Okay. I- I don't know how to handle this," Shinobu whispered, her words as loud as a thunderclap. "Are we supposed to run an obituary? Do we apply for a pension or something? He wasn't really even a Konoha shinobi."

"I don't know. I- I never thought I'd _need_ to write an obituary."

"He was only fifteen." Shinobu stared at some indeterminate spot on the floor. "There was-" her voice broke again, dying into a tiny, thin rasp, "-_so much_ he had left to do. He won't- he won't ever know what it is to get drunk, or to have his first kiss, or rent his first apartment."

There would be no more firsts in Katashi's life: only the dull, unending plain of days still to come for the rest of them, mornings where they would walk into the kitchen and find only eight plates set out, evenings where they would turn to say something to him and he would not be there, afternoons where the apartment would be too silent, taking on the tinge of a mausoleum.

His life had ended, cut short in a rude slash of blood and fear, but theirs stretched out before them, and there was no joy to be found in it.

"Moriko?" Shinobu said, her voice still distant, hollow, "are you okay?"

The youngest still hadn't reacted, and Naruto wasn't even sure if she really _comprehended_ what death meant: in her delayed brain, she might still be expecting him to come home.

Moriko turned her face up to Shinobu's, but said nothing, dark eyes grave.

"What am I supposed to say?" Shinobu whispered. "How am I supposed to fix this?"

She couldn't fix this. For all of her strength, and all of her skill- for all that she, alone among all the people in the world, could have saved Katashi, had she been there- she couldn't figure out how to tell Moriko that her beloved older brother was dead.

"I don't know," Naruto said, and the words blistered his lips as they left.

Something broke behind him, and Shinobu's eyes widened as he felt chakra, black and cold as the depths of the ocean, race over his skin.

"You _reek_ of death."

Naruto turned, Yugito looming over him with eyes flat and empty as a mirror, her thin body swimming in sweatpants and T-shirt, face pale and unmoving as stone.

Naruto's stomach twisted inside him, slammed against his ribs, because he knew that Yugito took her vow of protection _very_ seriously.

That the idea that she failed in her vow could destroy her as nothing else could.

"K-"

Yugito's expression made him snap his mouth shut, her eyes riveted on the bloodstained sword on the coffee table. She reached out, her hand trembling, and closed soot-stained fingers around the hilt, lifting the sword and bringing it close, cradling it to herself like a child.

Oh. It had been her sword, he remembered, as he watched her fingers stroke the sharkskin-wrapped hilt, before her lips twitched and she tore it out of the sheath, the broken edge of the top half emerging into light with a terrible screech of metal against metal.

Yugito's expression as she studied the jagged end made Naruto's skin crawl, and he knew what she saw when she regarded the broken sword.

Failure, for both she and her weapon had failed to save Katashi, to uphold the promise that she would be the first to go.

The fire on her arms flickered and went out.

"Yugito?"

She didn't look up, her bleak gaze fixed on her blade.

"Was it a good death?" Yugito rasped, ignoring Shinobu's gasp of outrage. "Did he die well?"

Another of Kumo's strange concepts: that to die in battle alone was somehow better than to die at home, surrounded by friends and family.

"Yeah. He took Hidan with him, and it was-" he had to say this, to comfort Shinobu, to let her know that their brother hadn't died strangling and clawing at the earth, "-a quick death." He had died with his face to the foe, destroying one of the most powerful shinobi on the continent with a single jutsu, and he had taken the Isonade with him.

"He died well."

"What was the cause?" Her voice, toneless, rang out in the silence.

He could feel the malleability of Katashi's torso even now, the sticky warmth of blood, sense-memories etched into his skin forever. He was going to be sick.

"Massive trauma to the chest," he managed, before he bolted upright and hurled himself into the bathroom down the hall to vomit in the toilet, his eyes and mouth burning as he retched, bits of half-digested ration bars clinging to his teeth as he stared down into his last few meals with blurry eyes.

His throat ached, and God, he needed to sleep.

He sat up, levered himself upright even though his limbs shook with exhaustion, and went into the hall, a sliver of light spilling warm and honey-yellow onto the wall from a barely-open door.

Katashi's room.

An iron band wrapped itself around his chest as he reached for the doorknob, the cold metal burning his palm, and pushed the door open.

The bed's wave-print sheets remained unmade, waiting for an occupant that would never return, and free catalogues- Katashi had never been able to resist anything free, even if they were pieces of shit- mingled with boxes of old snack food, heaped high in the corners.

Something hot and wet expanded and lodged in his throat as he tried to breathe, failing miserably. This air still smelled of Katashi- sweat and salt and life- and all of his possessions were still here, shoved into corners or the closet, and his clothes hung wrinkled on bad plastic hangers.

Everywhere Naruto looked, there was something to hurt him more.

The carpet scratched at his bare feet as he stepped over half-opened tins of crackers and plastic packets of ramen, settling on the side of the bed.

Trembling, he lay down in the space Katashi had left, clutched the pillow to his chest.

And even the burning tears that dripped down his face weren't enough to bring any warmth back to this empty room.

- - -

Shinobu pushed Moriko off her lap and stood, gaze fixed on Yugito. Yugito's pale gaze was trained down the hallway, but finally it swung around to pin her in her spot.

The rage there made Shinobu quail.

"Answer me this," Yugito whispered.

Shinobu's mouth went dry.

"He said it was massive trauma to the chest, and I know you- I know what you can do. I've seen you reattach limbs. I hear about you bringing these Konoha shinobi back from the brink of death every day, doing things that no one else can do. A little massive chest trauma should be all in a day's work for you. So tell me, if you had been there, could you have fixed him?"

"I-"

She didn't know how to deal with this anger, this blind rage directed at her- knew that it came from Yugito's hatred from her own failure- but to stand here and be accused of failure, of not being there, by her was just-

"_Could you?!"_ Yugito advanced, flinging the broken sword aside, the blade landing in a corner and slashing a deep gouge into the carpeting.

Shinobu swallowed, and held her ground.

"Yes. Yes, if I had been there, I could have saved him. But I wasn't, and I think that you-" her voice shook, "-blaming me for it, for upholding the terms of my own vow-"

'_When you couldn't even uphold your own' _went unspoken.

"-is the worst thing you could do. You think I don't miss him just as much as you? You think that working in a hospital, saving the lives of shinobi, is to blame-"

"You _help_ them!" Yugito screamed at her, dry-eyed, pale as parchment, voice ringing off the walls. Shinobu shrunk into herself, unable to speak as Yugito advanced. "You work in that hospital and you drain yourself dry, to let them live- they're worthless! They get to live and Katashi-" her voice broke, "-_Katashi-"_

And she whirled in a flash of black and disappeared down the hallway and into her room, the door slamming behind her.

Shinobu swayed, dizzied by the force of her anger, and searched for Moriko, who was standing behind the ottoman, still expressionless. Shinobu's skin crawled at the youngest of the jinchuuriki's lack of feeling. Moriko was usually so expressive, laughing, smiling, shrieking with joy, because as long as she had lived with them, she had been spoiled absolutely rotten. She had never had a reason to cry.

Shinobu would have preferred tears at the moment, though.

"Stay here for a moment, okay?" she asked, waiting for Moriko's nod before turning and heading down the hallway towards Yugito's room. The doorknob turned easily beneath her hand, and she went inside.

Yugito's room was eerily austere, her bed made, the covers tucked into hospital corners. There were no decorations on the walls, nothing on the bedside table but a lamp and a battered copy of Icha Icha Paradise Volume One.

The closet door was open.

Shinobu leaned inside the closet, caught sight of Yugito, surrounded by worn ANBU blacks and boxes of weaponry pilfered from the stores, and her heart broke at the sight of this twenty-three-year-old woman hiding in a closet like a child because she didn't understand how to deal with her own emotions.

Yugito was resting her chin on her drawn-up knees, arms wrapped around her legs, her pale blue eyes glowing in the darkness.

"Hey," Shinobu whispered, slipping through the door. "May I sit down?"

A slow, grudging nod.

Shinobu eased herself to the floor beside Yugito, sitting as close as she could without actually touching her- Yugito wasn't standoffish, exactly, but it was always a crapshoot whether she would accept any form of physical affection.

She could feel Yugito shaking next to her, her breathing strained and shuddering as she forced back tears, and it was all she could do not to break down into sobs, but Yugito needed her, needed to talk this out, and she had to be strong for Yugito, because she was the oldest, she was the healer, and she would be there if they needed her.

"_Why?_" Yugito finally forced out, her voice scratchy and so pained that Shinobu's heart seized in her chest, "Why do you keep helping them? Why do you love humans? Why let them live, when you've seen-"

Shaking even harder now, her words almost unintelligible, "-what they do to each other, to _us-_ to him? How can you care for them when they killed Katashi? What value are they?"

Shinobu stared ahead into the darkness, digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands to keep from breaking down, trying to piece together her feelings enough to explain.

How did you explain this?

"I love them, I help them because-" she shook her head, forcing back a sniffle, "I spend all day around them, around all these boys and girls dying under my hands. And they- every single one of them- is dying for a future that isn't their own.

Man is the only creature on earth with that capacity. To sacrifice themselves for the future. To- to die, hoping that their death will make a world that they won't see somehow _better_." She looked down at her hands, remembering the baby she had delivered last Friday, a life entering the world as Katashi's left it.

"I love them because every day, they die out there for that better future, because in their minds, that ideal is worth their sacrifice. They are- we are- unique in all the world because of that ability to believe in an ideal so strongly that it is worth dying for."

Tears itched in her eyes. "And every time I bring one of them back from the brink of death, I'm saving some small measure of that idealism."

A long silence stretched between them before Yugito sighed next to her, shifting. "I'm going to tell you a story."

What? Yugito hated talking about herself, about her past- all Shinobu knew was that she had a brother and a mother back in Kumo- so the idea of her telling a story was ridiculous. Still, best to stay quiet.

Yugito twisted to stare at Shinobu, a fierce, terrible, broken light shining out of her eyes. "When I was young, I snuck into the art museum in Kumo to see an exhibition of old prints that everyone had been raving about, talking about the _symbolism, _the _meaning_, the _beauty_. And there was so much emotion in their voices, emotion that I- I had never felt.

I wanted to feel it.

So after it was dark, I went inside, and I looked at these scrolls. And you know what I felt?"

Shinobu shook her head, and Yugito's face twisted as she grabbed Shinobu's shoulders,

"Nothing. I spent all night looking at these scrolls- at a thousand years' worth of work, of poems about love, and honor, and duty, and sacrifice- and all I felt was disgust at how much effort had been wasted on creating something of no practical value, something that was _worthless_ when it came to survival. And I tore them from the walls and stamped them to pieces beneath my feet, a thousand years of effort down the drain."

"And I realized that I will never see a sunset as something beautiful, and not as another day I might die. I will never look at a kunai and admire the shine of sunlight on metal, and not the way it can open up a man's throat. I will never appreciate _Icha Icha Paradise_ as entertainment, and not a mechanism to preserve my sanity. I will never be able to appreciate beauty, or honor, or _anything_ that doesn't relate to food, shelter, safety-"

Yugito's fingers were icy where they dug into Shinobu's shoulders, and her voice cracked and trembled and broke like Shinobu's heart was breaking,

"I will _never_ be human. I will always be a- an _animal_, unable to see things for something other than survival, and _they_ made me this way- made Katashi this way, made all of us- _broke_ all of us-"

She tore her hands away from Shinobu, her voice strangled,

"I look at them, and they walk like me, they talk like me, they breathe like me-" she dug her fingers into her hair, ripped at her scalp, and oh, God, blood was streaking down over her pale face, "but they're _not_ me-"

A tormented sob as she began to rock, words shredding from her lips, "-and I'm not them! And I _hate_ them for it, because every goddamn time I look at them, something in me knows that-

That no matter how hard I try, that no matter how long I try to be like them, no matter that I look and talk and breathe like them, I can't _feel_ like them. That I'm going to spend the rest of my life, whenever I look at them, listening to the voice that tells me: you will _never _be able to feel what they feel, you-" her voice dripped venom,

"-_animal._"

Shinobu couldn't breathe, her chest constricted by the utter depth of pain and self-loathing in Yugito's voice, too despairing even to reach out to embrace her as Yugito shook next to her.

She wasn't a therapist. How was she supposed to help a woman who could take no joy in life, because all life represented to her was a chance to die?

The rug had been ripped out from under her again, and not even organizing a funeral could stem the gnawing pain inside her- grief for Katashi, grief for Yugito, grief for Naruto who thought he had failed-

There was nothing to do but reach out, Yugito leaning into her embrace without complaint, too tired to protest, and Shinobu rocked her back and forth as Yugito might have rocked the child she would never have.

Oh, God, now she understood Yugito's fury at her own sterility, the fury of a woman trying desperately to find something to love, in the hopes that loving something for reasons beyond survival would prove to everyone that she was more than what they had made of her.

That she could love like them.

That she was human.

Shinobu pressed a futile kiss against the long scores gouged into Yugito's scalp and rocked her, Yugito's hand coming up to cover hers, calluses scratching her skin.

"I will never be like them, will I?" Yugito said, the only emotion in her voice deadened acceptance.

Shinobu swallowed down tears, and answered as honestly as she could,

"No."

- - -

Shinobu left Yugito sitting in her closet among the kunai and drifted back into the living room, passing Katashi's room. Through the little crack in the door, she could see Naruto sprawled asleep across Katashi's bed, his face still marked with tears.

He looked far too big for such a small bed.

She had to find something to do, had to stave off the grief pressing in from all sides.

"Moriko?" she called, hearing the small girl's giggle from the entryway.

Varg had to be home, then, with Riko. Weight settled on her shoulders, her stomach queasy.

She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to flatten it, glancing at the mirror above the fireplace in a vain attempt to compose herself.

It didn't work. Her eyes were still stained ruby from tears, her lips and cheeks pale, almost bloodless. For a moment she glanced at Riko's small box of makeup, wondering, but then turned away, sighing, watching Varg's giant shadow spill across the floor, Moriko a conspicuous lump hauling herself up his leg.

Fuck, she didn't want to tell them, to ruin this happy scene; she wanted to crawl into her bed and clutch her pillow to her chest, or go to the hospital and bury herself in the clever machinery of human bodies.

Steeling herself, she went into the foyer.

The jinchuuriki had finally convinced Varg to wear shirts, the thick slashes of scar tissue dark shadows beneath the cloth stretched across his muscular back. Varg grinned at her, his dark blue eyes alight with laughter, Moriko swinging back and forth from one outstretched arm, laughing, bright and clear. Riko was nestled in his other arm, her dark head resting against his shoulder.

Shinobu cleared her throat.

"Hey, guys."

They must've picked up on the bad news, Varg's gaze sharpening as he lowered Moriko to the ground. Riko turned her blindfolded face to Shinobu, tilting her head.

"Come on into the living room," she said, leading them in. Varg padded after her, glancing around as if he was expecting shinobi to leap on him the minute he got inside, and settled on the couch, Riko worming her way out of his grip to perch beside him.

"Something has happened," Riko said, her voice tight.

"Yes," Shinobu said, knitting her fingers together and biting her bottom lip as if to stem the words that bubbled up in her throat. Varg wrapped his arms around himself, shuddering, tiny breaths jerking out of him as he rocked back and forth.

Shinobu leapt up and slung her arms around his massive shoulders, Varg mumbling in his strange Northern language, his golden beard scratching her skin.

"Someone is dead, aren't they?" Riko whispered, her head bowed.

"Yes."

Riko pressed her lips together, unmoving as Shinobu said, the words tearing her throat,

"Katashi is dead."

And over Varg's shoulder, Riko collapsed in on herself, drawing her knees to her chest, forehead resting on her kneecaps, skinny shoulders shaking, once, twice, before she went utterly still and silent, her spine rising, falling like waves crashing against a shore.

Varg stiffened in her arms, gasping, keening, his massive frame seeming as fragile as a child's in that moment. He lifted his head to face her, lips trembling, lightning sparking blue-white in his eyes.

Everything- the safety that they had given him, his blind unthinking trust that his family, his loved ones that had saved him from death, was invincible- was torn from him in that moment, tears rolling down over his sharp cheekbones.

"Dead?" he repeated, deep voice shaking in Shinobu's chest.

Oh, God, how she hated herself in that moment, a bitter riptide sweeping her away as she closed her eyes, inclining her head.

Varg broke down in her arms, his big, warm hands grabbing great handfuls of her scrubs as he yanked her close and buried his face in her shoulder, his gasps for breath hot on her neck.

She rocked him, humming, as he snuffled, only Katashi's name distinguishable in his moans.

Riko lifted her head, blindfolded face turned towards the late afternoon light pouring in through the windows.

"Gaara doesn't know."

"Correct," Shinobu agreed. Varg shifted, his hands spanning her back, his eyelashes rendered bronze with tears.

Riko tipped her face upwards, light falling across the white streak in her hair. "I'm going to go to my room now. I have an equation to work out."

She placed her hands on the edge of the couch, pushed off, and staggered to her feet, Shinobu ready to leap to catch her if she overbalanced. But she caught herself against the wall, leaned heavily against it, and picked her way along, heavy footfalls marking her passage, her muscular control so deteriorated that she could barely lift her feet.

Riko's apathy was a sham: she would dedicate herself solely to her work for a week or two, but always in the back of her head, she would be dissecting her grief, turning it over, examining what it meant for Katashi to be gone. And only then, once she knew every nuance, would she truly allow herself to grieve.

Shinobu would check on her later to take her pulse and blood pressure.

"Varg?"

Her brother glanced at her out of red-rimmed eyes, beard scratching her skin, brow quirking.

"Will you put Moriko down for her nap?"

Better to distract him now, to try and redirect his attention. He was an emotional creature, maturity stunted by the years he had spent in the cell, and if given the opportunity, he would keep wallowing in grief that he didn't know how to manage or understand.

Varg looked down at Moriko, who was sitting at his feet, playing with the straps on his sandals, and nodded, scooping her up in one arm, standing and carrying her down the hallway to her room.

He would probably spend the night with her, his giant frame curled around her small one like a wolf with a pup, in a vain attempt to protect her from the world that had once again stripped him of safety.

Everyone was taken care of. Everyone here knew what had happened, except Noboru, and he wouldn't be home for two hours.

She needed something to do. She couldn't just sit here, because then it would all come swarming in, and then she'd be no use to anyone.

The front closet needed organizing, stacked high as it was with old kunai and scrolls. Snapping on some rubber gloves, armed with a dust cloth, she attacked it with a vengeance, filing scrolls away alphabetically, packing kunai in boxes, her every thought determinedly _not_ about Katashi.

Someone knocked on the door, and she clawed her way free, sneezing, to yank it open.

"What?"

The members of Team Eight stared at her, Shino's hand paused in mid-knock. Shinobu stared at them, something beastly- the Hachibi- buried deep in her _hating _them for their failure, for their weakness, for the fact that Katashi had died for them.

"W-we can come back later," Kiba offered, stepping away from the door, Hinata's hair flopping as she nodded along.

"We brought his will," Shino said, fishing a yellow envelope out of his sleeve and handing it to Shinobu. "The Hokage knows of his passing, and expressed her condolences." His eyes flashed behind the glasses, the corner of his lips twitching upward in a small smile behind the collar. "I went ahead and asked that they send someone over later to explain all the procedures for the family of a deceased shinobi." At Shinobu's blank stare, he hastened to add, "I hope I wasn't presumptuous-"

"No, no, not at all!" Shinobu interjected, waving her bright yellow rubber-clad hands around. "Thank you; I was wondering about obituaries and such. That'll be a great help." She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, his blush making her smile.

"Thank you," she said again. "All of you. I know that you did everything you could."

Hinata swallowed. "H- he was amazing as a shinobi. Kiri is no longer a r-real threat because of what he was ab- able to do, and I only wish I could've known him bet- better."

"Same here," Kiba said.

Shinobu smiled, swallowing back her tears. "I'm glad."

"We'll let you get started on that," Kiba said, nodding at the will clutched in Shinobu's hand, before he spun on his heel and escaped the awkward situation, Hinata sketching out a formal bow and scurrying after.

"I'd better follow them," said Shino, rolling his eyes behind his glasses.

"Okay." Shinobu stepped forward and pulled down his coat collar, kissing him again, trying to express her appreciation for all that he had done. Shino smiled, squeezing her hand, and turned to follow his teammates.

Shinobu watched him go, then turned and went back into the apartment. The will was made of cheap form paper, still sealed, and it would be the last thing of Katashi's that she would ever read.

Stripping off her rubber gloves, she flung them in the sink before plopping into a chair at the kitchen table, half of the surface covered in stuff from Yugito's mission.

The kusarigama did well for a letter opener, the will falling open, Katashi's chicken-scratch scrawl unfurling before her once more. The form was easily read, divided into monetary assets, real estate property, personal jutsu scrolls, and other sundry items.

Shinobu scanned the will, incredulity blooming in her, lips curling into a grin.

Katashi hadn't taken the will seriously at _all, _although he'd obviously gone back over it later and scribbled in his actual answers in different ink, probably after Noboru had threatened him.

He was to be burned '_in a flaming boat on top of a mountain.' _His monetary assets were to go to '_throwing an awesome party_,' his personal jutsus were '_too badass for anyone else to handle_,' and his personal items were to be _'put in storage forever so that nobody else can use them_, _because I'm a dick that way._'

"No cursing," Shinobu muttered automatically.

And in blue ink, the real answers: he wanted to be buried beside the other jinchuuriki. His money was to be used for _'whatever the jinchuuriki think best,_' his personal jutsus were '_for the other jinchuuriki to learn, if they think it'll help them_.' His sword was returned to Yugito, his prank items to Naruto, and any of the canned food he had that was good was willed to the food bank.

'_I know what being hungry feels like,_' he'd written, '_and I don't want anyone else to feel that way, ever._'

He'd finished the will off with an exuberant signature, his name slashed across the paper in blue ink, a doodle of a shark with three tails finishing it.

Drops of water dimpled the paper, darkening it to gray-yellow, Shinobu finding herself crying silently, shuddering, trying to stuff down the agony of seeing now what Katashi could have been, the maturity that had been growing in him, the thoughtful, strong man he had been growing up to be.

That he now would never become.

Someone coughed behind her.

Broken from her reverie, she twisted and saw Noboru standing there, his sulfurous eyes wet.

"I saw his sword." Noboru's mouth twitched in something like a smile, his gaze sympathetic as he cast away his cane, the wooden stick clattering to the tile floor.

"Come here, dear," he said, saying the words that she hadn't known she'd needed to hear.

He opened his arms, and she stood, rushed at him, fell into them with a sob, burying her face in his old shirt that smelled of tea leaves, his frail body bearing her up as he- selfless as always- held her close and rocked her back and forth as she curled her hands in his shirt and choked on tears.

He didn't speak, but he held her as she wept, and that was all she needed.

- - -

**A/N:** All comments and criticism are loved greatly. Please do not forget to check out Amsuhl's lovely fanart from the last chapter, depicting Kankuro and Gaara's scene together!


	33. Chapter 33

**A/N**: I sincerely apologize for the delay in the writing of this chapter. I've returned to college and have many assignments, and real life and academics must always take precedence over fanfiction and the Internet. Although this chapter is mostly a set-up chapter for occurrences in later chapters, I hope you still find it enjoyable.

Also, please go and check out ncfan's story, 'Parallels of Father and Son,' written as an AU scene after Katashi's death. I'm still incredibly honored by the fact that someone else chose to write in this universe. Please leave the author lots of reviews, as it is an incredibly well-done fic.

* * *

_Screaming on the inside  
I am frail and withered  
Cover up the wounds  
That I can't hide_

- 'Into the Nothing' by Breaking Benjamin

* * *

Kankuro stood beside Temari at her desk, watching as she slashed her pen across the tactical map, obsessed with trying to find a way to get around Gaara and get to Konoha- no matter how many men she might lose on the way.

"Temari?" he asked, the words harsh in his mouth, bitter with the taste of hopes dashed before. But if only- if only she would _listen_ this time-

The knife burning into his palm would cease to weigh heavy on his hand.

"_What!?"_ She jerked around in her chair to glare up at him.

"I just- can you just explain why you want to stay in this war so badly?"

She rolled her eyes. "This again? You've told me time and time again that you think this war is wrong, and not once- not _once, _Kankuro, have you given me a satisfactory answer why you think that!"

"You don't find it suspicious that all of a sudden four of the Great Countries decide to just shit on the status quo and get involved in a war? I mean, I understand the smaller ones throwing their kunai in the game, since this is probably the only chance they'll ever have to grab a piece of the Land of Fire."

"It's the same for us." Temari arched a brow. "You've seen the reports; all of our normal mercenary work is going to Konoha instead. Add that to the fact that they've been killing our shinobi; if we don't get out of this spiral right now, we're going to have to radically shift our economy to something other than shinobi-based, and agriculture isn't something we're exactly suited for, is it?"

Things devolved from there, until they were standing up, nose-to-nose, screaming in each other's faces, and Kankuro felt tears of anticipation prickling in his eyes.

"You're just blind, Kankuro!"

"Goddamnit, Temari!" Kankuro flung his arm across the table, sending the inkwell spilling onto the ground, map hanging halfway off the edge. '_Don't- don't make me do this._' Out of his peripheral vision, he saw the two guards at the door twitch open the curtain and peer inside, the look in his eyes making them quail.

"Go take a break," Temari said wearily. "I'll deal with him."

The sound of their footsteps receding was like a dagger in his heart.

An opportunity. One he would never have again, and it had all come down to this- to her eyes.

He searched them for any sign of genjutsu, of delusion, anything to take this choice away from him, but found only trust.

Gaara or Temari.

Jinchuuriki or warlord.

One who could have lied versus the one person who had never lied to him his entire life.

But- genjutsu or no genjutsu, lie or no lie- she was leading Suna, his beloved desert land, down a road she would never return from.

The choice had been made. He knew what he must do, and a cold, calm clarity settled on him like a cloud.

'_Oh God, my God, please-_'

Someone's hand grasped a knife and lashed up, blood flowering on Temari's throat as the knife was returned to its place on his belt.

Paralyzed, he stared at her, beloved sister, bleeding- words strangling, dying in his throat-

He could see everything- the way her eyes flew open, her mouth opening in a silent cry, the sway backwards, as if she stood upon a precipice.

"_Kankuro?_" she choked with the last of her breath, sinking into his trembling arms, her eyes staring into his- her blood warm against his skin as he gasped her name and clutched her to him, sliding his hand into her hair, pressing her face to his shoulder.

"Shh," he whispered, staring dry-eyed at the red canvas above, pressing her head down into his shoulder with even more force, "Shh," as she struggled, kicking at him, weak flails that he absorbed as easily as breathing, "Shh," as the blood gurgled in her throat and spread across his jacket, "Shh" as she stilled.

Shifted his head enough to press his ear to her throat, hoping to hear a heartbeat and yet praying for silence.

For once- for _once_ in his goddamn pathetic life- his prayers were answered.

He was moving through fog as he lifted her head off his shoulder. Her face was still red, her eyes still open.

He had done it.

He had saved Suna.

He felt nothing as he laid her down on the cushions piled in a corner, her body sprawling over them, blood still leaking sluggishly from the wound in her throat.

He wasn't crying- _goddamn him why wasn't he crying_?!- as he turned, pulling the glass of water off the desk, dipping his fingers inside and moistening the lips stained ruby-red with blood and not with the makeup she secretly loved. He washed the blood off her neck, arranged her limbs just so, until she lay as if sleeping.

He turned, glanced at the water clock. Fifteen minutes until the next shift came on duty- enough time to set up the shrine to the dead. He grabbed his backpack, dragging out the small collapsible table. The snap of it locking into position was loud in the silence. He set up the small shrine as quickly as he could, then, finished, sat back on his heels.

It seemed right to say something.

"I love you, Temari, and I'm so, so sorry-" his voice was flat, unconvincing even to his own ears, "But don't you see, it was all for the best? You just kept- you were _wrong_, and you just wouldn't _believe_ me-" and he trailed off, because words could mean nothing now, at the end.

Her hand was still warm in his as he placed the six cold coins in her palm and curled fingers over them. Cold as the ache in his gut, as the horror- the _oh god what have I done_- pounding in his temples, as the utter finality of the hole shaped like hope in his mind.

Hope was something he no longer had the right to have.

If he blinked, he could recall this same scene of the water, the coins, three times over- Mother, Yashamaru, Father-

Their bloodline was a blot upon the earth, a curse far greater and more bitter than any curse men had tongue to voice- a curse born in the howl of a woman and the laughter of a man who tore soul from body to try and tame the desert- a curse in the smile of a man who spoke of love and yet gave none- a curse that found fruition in the three children who created a spiral of death, brother manipulating brother against sister.

A curse that ended with him, for Gaara would have no children.

He bit back the scream rising in his throat. He would not kill himself like the warriors of old, dying as their enemies battered down the gates- a suicide pill or a sword were not for him, the kinslayer.

The only courageous thing he had left to him was to die, calm and silent, before the scornful eyes of his people. To bear the shame and the scorn, to explain his crimes to ears that would not hear him-

To walk the road to his own death with a willing heart, because Suna- his Suna- demanded that of him, and everything he had ever done was for his country.

The guards had returned and were talking outside, discussing the strategy for the next push into Konoha, unknowing that their Kazekage lay here dead on silken cushions, the knife that did the heroic crime still resting on Kankuro's belt.

As if in a dream, Kankuro- the traitor savior of his country- rose from his position on the floor with tears streaming unnoticed down his face, went to the curtain hanging across the doorway, and pulled it back.

* * *

Sasuke leaned on the gate to one of the new gardens, watching as Moriko puttered about, her hands smeared with dirt, plants sprouting wherever she walked. Her clothes were nearly black with soil, her badly-cut hair bedecked with a very large, extremely colorful orchid.

She looked as happy as a pig in slop.

No Naruto, though, and finding Naruto was his present objective. He and Sakura had just barely gotten back from a deep recon mission into Iwa-controlled territory when they'd heard the news that one of the jinchuuriki had fallen.

His first thought had been '_that was fast_.' No one- least of all the civilians, who expected the jinchuuriki to save them, cowards that they were- had even _thought_ that the jinchuuriki could die, much less in the first major battle of the war. It had apparently been Katashi who died, the boy he remembered as protective and egotistical, always brandishing his sword at the Konoha shinobi as if he thought they'd be _impressed_.

A wail broke through his thoughts and he glanced up just in time to see Moriko freeze, her eyes- he frowned; hadn't they been hazel?- a deep emerald. She stood with her chubby hands floating in the air above a trailing tomato vine, without even the rise and fall of her shoulders to show she lived. Then-

Her legs collapsed underneath her as she toppled backwards, landing on her back amongst the flowers, sprawled like a broken doll. Sasuke was already moving, vaulting the fence to land beside her. He pressed fingers to her neck, locating a pulse vacillating between barely there and racing, Sharingan whirling. There was no genjutsu on her, no-

Green chakra, the dark green of an ivy leaf, was swirling in her chakra pathways, flowering from the seal inked around her eye.

Another chakra source close by, this the yellow-green of sulfur. Oh, thank God it was Noboru; if Varg had been here he would have been hard-pressed to explain this without serious injury.

"Noboru!"

The elderly man leaned out from behind a row of cornstalks, his eyes widening. He fairly flew to Sasuke's side, falling to his knees beside Moriko, sparing only a glance for Sasuke.

"Situation report," Noboru rapped out, the military training in Sasuke making him respond reflexively.

"Her pulse is erratic. I was looking for Naruto, and while I was standing here, she froze up, then fell backwards. There's demonic chakra emanating from the seal, and it's making inroads into her brain."

Noboru scooped up Moriko, cradling her limp form in his arms, then placed his hand on Sasuke's shoulder. "Hospital. Now."

Too shocked at the situation to protest, Sasuke immediately performed a teleportation jutsu, the two of them materializing before Sakura, who was pulling a shift in the hospital's civilian emergency room even though Sasuke had _tried_ to get her to go home and get some rest.

Sakura jerked back at their arrival, then saw Moriko, pale and still, draped over Noboru's arms. Her eyes narrowed, flashing with chakra as she performed a diagnosis jutsu. "Chakra overload from her bijuu; no brain damage as of yet, but it's hitting her brainstem pretty hard." She spun on her heel, grabbing a crash cart from one of the passing orderlies, and hooked her fingers in the poor orderly's collar. "Get me Shinobu: she'll be in operating room C. Direct her to emergency intake, room 103." The orderly nodded, gulping, and sprinted away: Sasuke almost fancied that he could see a trail of urine in the man's wake. Sakura turned back to them and held out her arms for Moriko.

Noboru's grip tightened, his yellow eyes gleaming, mouth flattening into a thin white line.

"Noboru," Sakura said, her voice almost lost amidst the tumult of the emergency room, "I'm not going to hurt her. I need you to gather the other jinchuuriki while I stabilize her."

Noboru took a step back, demonic chakra flaring in his hands, green scales crawling up his arms, the stench of sulfur permeating everything, Sasuke's heart spasming at the crushing fury bleeding off the old man.

Sakura's lip twitched, her voice escalating into a roar that nearly shook the ceiling, hands that could shatter mountains curling into fists. "Noboru. I am a medic; you are not, and every second you stand here denying her medical help that I can provide, you are causing her more damage that her brain _does not need. _Now _give_ me the goddamn girl and let _me do my fucking job!_"

Silence reigned in the room for a long, long moment.

Noboru blinked, then held out Moriko- who lay still, her head flung back, emerald eyes still staring, as if she had died scarce moments ago- to Sakura, who took her in her arms and spun on her heel.

"Sasuke, bring the crash cart." With that brusque instruction, Sakura was off, sprinting down the hallway and leaving Sasuke to toil in her wake, hauling the cart. He entered room 103 as Sakura was laying Moriko out on the bed, dirt smearing black across the pristine sheets.

"What'd you see?" Symbols of green chakra floated in the air above Moriko, Sakura staring at them and waving her hands, every twitch of her fingers making the symbols rearrange. A diagnostics jutsu, then; he'd seen her use it before in the field. He gave her the same report he gave Noboru, then took up a position in the corner just as Shinobu charged through the door, red-faced and panting, looking as though she'd just run a mile.

Though really, with the shape she was in, she probably felt like she had.

"Report," Shinobu said, taking up a place by Sakura's side and joining in… whatever it was they were doing. Sasuke was out of his element here: he'd never needed to know anything about healing jutsu beyond 'treat those that know it well, for they're the ones that'll keep your exhausted carcass alive on the battlefield.'

This just disoriented him.

"It's her bijuu," Sakura said, directing Shinobu's attention to several particular glyphs that floated above Moriko's slack face. "The bijuu's chakra is moving upwards towards the tenketsu points in her brain; when it hit the ocular tenketsu, that's what caused the green flash."

Shinobu's face smoothed out, her visage forbidding and cold as marble. "The Hokou has never done anything like this before, but a coma-like state resulting from the leakage of demonic chakra isn't unusual: we've found evidence of such in the bodies and memories of past jinchuuriki." She reached out and chopped her hand through one of the glyphs, several more symbols splitting off for her to study. "It's not _damaging_ her neurons in the same way Riko's are-"

The door banged once more, Sasuke nearly leaping out of his own skin as Naruto and Yugito struggled to be the first one through, the two of them pushing at each other, their eyes fixed on Moriko's still form even as their limbs flailed, the two of them too consumed by the need to get through the door that they- idiots that they were- wouldn't _back up_ and try again. Sasuke rolled his eyes, about to offer advice when someone- Varg- roared something in guttural tones outside and kicked both of them.

Yugito and Naruto sailed into the room, the twin looks of offended shock on their faces almost comical. They caught themselves, arms windmilling, just before they hit the bedside, feet skidding on the tile, the two of them falling onto their asses.

Any comedy in the situation was immediately destroyed by Varg's entrance.

Lightning burned across the walls, leaving black peeling trails in its wake, as a colossus entered, wreathed in storm. Varg's hair, bleached to bone-white, fluttered in a non-existent breeze, lightning sparking on his hands, twining over his skin, the delicate tracing of veins in his skin etched in blue fire. Where he walked, only melted tile remained. As he breathed, the air became thick with ozone, until Sasuke choked on the musty stench.

Thunder rolled in the distance, the beating of great war drums.

Varg turned alien crimson eyes, pitiless as the tempest, to Sasuke, and only the knowledge that Sakura was here kept Sasuke from cringing, from turning his face away.

"Moriko," Varg said, and the thunder echoed him.

"H-here," Sakura said, stepping aside. Varg took her place, staring down at the small girl he had inexplicably claimed as his own- Sasuke would not dare to presume why- his hands clenching on the metal railing on the bedside.

Liquid metal puddled at his feet.

"What-" Varg frowned, lightning lashing out, the overhead lights blowing out in a spectacular shower of glass pieces, raining down on Sakura and Naruto's heads. "_Why?_" His knees seemed about to buckle, massive shoulders shaking. Sasuke looked around at Naruto, Shinobu, Noboru, and saw nothing but exhaustion in their eyes, the exhaustion of knowing that they could not explain this, that whatever chance Varg might have had of understanding that explanation was gone long ago.

What had Kerumigakure _done?_ How could they have taken the Raijuu, a creature known to be unstable even without the volatility of human confines, and sealed it within a human who would never- _never_, no matter how hard or how long anyone tried- be mature enough to control his own emotions (much less the beast within) or to understand the world in which he lived?

Shinobu's hand glowed with green chakra- healing chakra, to renew the skin she lost as she pushed her hand through the lightning to lay it on Varg's back.

"We don't know, dear. It's got something to do with the Hokou."

"_Hokou_?" Varg's voice changed, pitched upwards, lightning crackling in every syllable, the thunder roaring as clouds covered the sun, the room black but for the form of white-blue fire that was Varg. Shinobu gasped, the sound high-pitched with agony, jerked her hand back, the flesh burned and peeling as lightning slashed over her skin. Yugito grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back, sending her stumbling into Noboru's arms.

Varg's brows drew together, brow wrinkling, mouth twisting in a lolling grin. His eyes, already a dark wine-red, flashed once more, something bestial, older than Konoha, turning its gaze to them. A net of lightning exploded out from Varg's body, humming, screeching like metal on stone, arcing over the metal in the room, slithering over the floor like white serpents.

"Raijuu," Naruto breathed, chakra already coalescing in his hand.

The Raijuu cocked its head. "Think you to harm me, fire-bearer?"

Naruto- wisely- said nothing.

A torrential rain began to fall, smashing against the glass with a sound like hailstones, the light of the sun extinguished.

"Ah, fire-bearer-" the Raijuu laughed, a sound like breaking glass that set Sasuke's teeth on edge, "-how suspicious you are. How quick to mistrust, to dislike, to hate, to burn, to maim, to _kill my children_-" the beast's voice rose upward, a voice utterly incongruous with Varg's massive bulk.

"-when all I desire is help the child that lies here, broken by Hokou."

"You will demand a price," Noboru said, stepping forward. "No bijuu offers anything freely."

The Raijuu's eyes glittered. "_Clever_ apothecary- a pity you know that a bargain must be struck."

Noboru's hands tightened on his cane, shoulders stiff, his stance the stance of a samurai guarding the gateway to his lord's castle.

"Your terms, bijuu," he snarled, green miasmas rising from his skin. Naruto cried out, made an abortive motion as if to come between the Raijuu and Noboru, but the old man merely shook his head, his gaze still fixed on the beast of thunder that walked in a human skin.

The Raijuu bared its teeth in something more like a sneer than a smile. "There shall come a time when the man known as Isamu, erstwhile leader of the human lands that I burned in vengeance for my unmourned children, shall look to you, apothecary, for his salvation. And when that time comes-

You must deny him."

"Done," Noboru said.

"_Noboru!"_ Riko gasped from where she leaned against the doorframe. "How-"

"I _will_ save Moriko," Noboru turned to face them, eyes burning gold, "no matter what the price."

"The bargain is struck," the Raijuu said, the cunning gleam of its eyes a far cry from the faraway kindness in Varg's. "I will hold you to your oath, cruel poisoner, as I meet my own." The red eyes flickered away from the group huddled in the corner, Sasuke's knees going weak as the crushing pressure of chakra and hate was lifted off him, to rest on Moriko's still form.

"The illusionist lies within her own mind." A tilt of the head. "The Hokou's genjutsu abilities… they have given her information she cannot comprehend, cannot express, and so she has fled within herself to a place of darkness, warmth, hunger. Someone must go within and wrench her free, for she cannot free herself."

The Raijuu pivoted once more to gaze at Noboru, lifting one hand, wreathed in small bolts of lightning, in a mocking goodbye. "Remember our bargain, apothecary, or suffer the wrath of a bijuu unleashed as I eat your daughters and sons, as mine were eaten, so that you may hear their voices-"

Noboru's hand, plated with green armor, struck out, knuckles impacting with the bottom of Varg's chin, Varg's head snapping back as he stumbled, grabbing at the bedside railing for support.

"I shall keep my oath," Noboru hissed in a voice that ached with fury and grief, green-yellow clouds of venom drifting forth from his mouth. Varg blinked, his eyes glittering hazel, and stared at Noboru with wounded eyes, lower lip quivering.

"Noboru?" Varg whispered, face collapsing into an expression of total misery.

The fury on Noboru's face melted away, his brow wrinkling, mouth twisting into a trembling smile as he opened his arms to Varg. "I'm so sorry-" the rest of the words were muffled by Varg plunging into Noboru's embrace, the great golden head tucked into Noboru's shoulder, massive back shaking with sobs as Noboru carded his hand through Varg's hair, rocking him back and forth like-

Like Sasuke's father had once done for him.

His throat aching, Sasuke turned away from the two of them, finding Sakura, pale and trembling, her hands clenched into fists, standing beside the doorway.

Trapped within her own mind, the Raijuu had said…

"Sakura."

She glanced at him, then wound her way through the crowd of jinchuuriki gathered around Varg and Noboru to his side, offering him a exhausted half-smile. "This is probably the most excitement the civilian ward has seen in… I don't know, _ever._"

"It seems the jinchuuriki specialize in creating excitement," Sasuke said, hooking his thumbs through the belt loops of his trousers. "Listen, do you know if Ino's around?"

Sakura's eyes widened, a grin tugging at her lips. "Good thinking, there."

"I _am_ a genius," he muttered. She rolled her eyes at him, and that deserved an elbowing to the solar plexus, one which she dodged neatly.

"I'll check on that," Sakura said, and fled the room, leaving him alone with a bunch of jinchuuriki expressing all sorts of interesting emotions all over each other.

Wonderful.

* * *

Inoichi Yamanaka stared. Then he rubbed at his eyes. Then he stared some more.

"You want me to _what?!_"

"The deployment registers said that Ino's not due to be rotated back to Konoha for R and R for another week," Haruno said, rolling her eyes skyward. Inoichi briefly regretted ever letting his daughter hang out with Haruno, if Haruno was so deeply embroiled with these jinchuuriki.

He tolerated the jinchuuriki because he must, because the Hokage apparently believed that a bunch of puppets with demons pulling the strings could save them all, but he would never care for them. He would never thank them, and as far as he was concerned, the death of the shark one was a blessing.

Inoichi remembered the newspaper headlines, the stories of village after village, island after island, going dark and silent, waves lapping at empty black stone where human feet had once walked. The death tolls had risen with each day, until those numbers blared out at them all: 100,000 lost on the Isonade's rampage.

He hoped those thousands of souls were at peace now, content with the knowledge that their killer was amongst them.

"That's… correct," he said, shaking himself mentally for his wool-gathering, "but you want me to go into a jinchuuriki's mind and fish her out? Out of a mind with a bijuu trapped inside?"

Haruno waved off his perfectly rational concerns, blathering over his drowned protests, "Yeah, but it's Moriko, and she's perfectly nice."

A jinchuuriki was a jinchuuriki, no matter their age or shape.

"But-"

Haruno's eyes hardened into twin chips of jade, hand shooting out and coiling in the front of his shirt, jerking his face down to hers, hot breath against his skin. "Listen, Yamanaka. If Moriko doesn't wake up, the jinchuuriki won't fight, and if the jinchuuriki don't fight, then us two, and Konoha, and your daughter, and your clan, are all doomed. So _get the fuck over yourself_, drop your prejudices, and let's _go_."

Inoichi stared into her eyes, gritting his teeth- how dare she ask him to use the Shintenshin no Jutsu, pride of their clan, for a demon?- as he saw nothing in them but a calm certainty that he would help, that he would betray everything he stood for.

What had the younger generation come to, when they would walk beside demons and entrust the salvation of their country and their people to beasts without consciences?

"I _will_ get Tsunade if I have to," Haruno whispered.

He jerked out of her grip, cloth tearing, and straightened, folding his arms across his chest. "Fine. Let's go."

Haruno bared her teeth, grabbed him by the wrist, and teleported, the world dissolving around them both, reforming as Inoichi's feet touched down on solid ground inside a dark hospital room, rain beating against the solitary window. The jinchuuriki were huddled around a bed, glimpses of a small girl seen through the forest of their limbs. The tall foreigner perched on a chair by the girl's head, her thin pale hand swallowed up by his giant mitts.

"This is Inoichi Yamanaka," Haruno announced to all and sundry. "He's going to enter Moriko's mind and return her to consciousness, along with hopefully getting the information the Hokou gave her."

Nii glanced at him, her face cold and expressionless as stone. "He is trustworthy?"

"Yeah," Haruno said, steamrolling over him and hauling him over to the bed, glass crunching beneath their feet, the jinchuuriki parting grudgingly to let him pass.

Inoichi could feel their heavy gazes on him, skin prickling with the knowledge that he was trapped in a room with seven of the most dangerous people on the continent, and if he fucked up getting this girl out of herself, neither heaven nor hell could save him.

"This is Moriko?" he asked, receiving a nod from Uzumaki. Returning the nod, he stared down at the girl. She lay on the bed as if dead, black dirt encrusted beneath the black dog's claws taking the place of human fingernails, clothes patched and worn pale at the knees and elbows. She looked like every small child, but for the opalescent green of her eyes and the twining tattoo of leaves around her eye, and for a moment, the anger burning a hole in his gut softened.

Wrenching his arm free of Haruno's grip, he performed the seals, whispering,

"Shintenshin no Jutsu."

The world faded around him, everything narrowing down to the deep green of her eyes, a green that swallowed him up, enfolded him in warmth and darkness and –

_Silence._

_A silence to stop the heart. _

_A silence to make you scream to prove that something existed._

_Inoichi opened his eyes and inhaled, the sound unbearably loud._

_He stood in the middle of an endless plain of silvered wheat, swaying in the silent breeze. If there was a sun, it was gone, and he stood beneath an alien sky, no stars breaking the inky darkness of the black dome above. There was nothing to break the monotony of the wheat fields, waves of silver grain stretching off into the distance all around him. The desolation of the girl's mindscape was astounding._

_What kind of upbringing could have produced this?_

_As he gazed around him, he saw a faint, green-gold light like tarnished brass emanating from a spot just over the horizon, the power of the bijuu's chakra making sweat run cold down his spine. _

_The girl was probably with the bijuu, then; there would be no reason for her to be out in this desolate landscape, representative of pain. Gathering his chakra to himself, Inoichi twisted the mindscape around him, flickering back into being at the source of the light._

_What in God's name…?_

_He stood at the edge of a great circle of uniform emerald grass, golden sunlight reminiscent of summer evenings pouring from every leaf of the tree that towered above, dwarfing him with its size, its trunk the size of Inoichi's house. The breeze had ceased, replaced by the sounds of late summer crickets chirping._

_It was almost heaven. _

_Nestled at the base of the tree was a shed, monstrous in proportion, seething with the red-black aura of pain and hunger. Its appearance had been twisted, the building taking on a demonic aspect, leaking agony out into the peaceful golden paradise surrounding it. A thick chain, bolted shut with a padlock, held the rotting door closed._

_This made no sense. Not that he should have expected sense from the mind of a jinchuuriki, but still… mindscapes were never this bleak, except in the cases of those so terribly abused as children that they had been unable to form a self-image. The tree might have come from the bijuu, seeing as how the Hokou was tied to plants, but the shed…_

_The shed didn't fit. _

_He approached, the emerald lawn bending beneath his footsteps, and twisted his hand, the chain and padlock splintering apart and dissolving before his eyes into wisps of black smoke, gleaming red. Muggy heat issued forth from the yawning black mouth, the heat tinged with the smell of rotting, dying things. Inoichi gagged, eyes tearing- this wasn't supposed to happen! There were no smells in mindscapes, certainly nothing this… pungent. Holding his sleeve over his mouth and nose, Inoichi bent to enter the shed._

_Warm, foul water swallowed his legs up to the mid-thigh, making him jerk back, muffle a curse. The shed was just as dark inside, the only light coming from a small aperture at the back and the open door behind him. The shed was filled with ghastly water, the light entering seeming to bend, even as Inoichi's gaze followed it, to fall upon-_

_A crib._

_A rusting crib, the bottom made out of a sheet of plywood, seething with enough agony to break a spirit, enough hunger to swallow up all the grain outside and never be full. A stained blanket lay crumpled at one end. _

_Inoichi's hand fell from his face to dangle, forgotten, by his side as he staggered backwards._

_This shed was too substantial, too odd, to be a mere symbol of some dark time in the child's life. This shed, filled with starvation and torture, wasn't a construct-_

_It was a memory. _

_Inoichi could not breathe, bile burning hot and salty-sweet up his throat. He swallowed it down with an effort._

_A child. They had done this to a small child: locked her in a shed with no water and no food. Even Konoha had given Uzumaki the bare necessities of life, had treated him only with a sense of benign neglect. _

_They would be better than the beast locked within him. They would not be murderers, because although Uzumaki was merely the human shell of a demon, he was the Hokage's son._

_Tearing his eyes from the crib, he sloshed through the water, bending to exit the choking shed. The tree loomed before him, stretching up farther than his eyes could see, the bark of the trunk curving away in both directions. More golden light, almost as bright as the sun, emanated from the top._

_The girl must be up there, with the beast._

_Only the knowledge that the jinchuuriki would flay him limb from limb if he failed kept him from backing out entirely. His heart hammering in his ears, Inoichi twisted the mindscape around him once more-_

_Warmth pervaded the air around him as he landed atop a branch, moss compressing beneath his feet, small orbs of dark green chakra, reminiscent of fireflies in summer, twirling through the air around him. A mighty wind, hot as the desert, rustled through the hair on the back of his neck, stirring his clothes. Inoichi shut his eyes against the knowledge that the Hokou, five-tailed bijuu who could toss him into nightmares from which there would be no awakening, rested behind him, constrained only by the sacrifice of some unknown hero._

_Heel scraping on the moss, he turned around and opened his eyes. _

_The Hokou was a creature beautiful enough to break the heart. Fur whiter than an orchid in full bloom, as pure as spring water, rippled silently in the never-ending breeze. Five tails lay curled atop its back, the purple-white of lightning, the deep brown of old soil, the iridescent blue of water, the pale azure of air, the red-orange hue of flame. Loops of vines imprisoned the beast, twining over its limbs, anchoring them to the branch, a tattered seal, inked in blood, fluttering from the vines over its front paws. The girl- Moriko- lay curled between its front paws, fists tucked beneath her chin and knees drawn up to her chest._

_Eyes the deep green of old bronze looked down at him without expression, not even the hatred that had been all the Kyuubi knew, all it could ever know. Where the other bijuu had expressed hate, this one had…_

_Nothing. It didn't even see him as worthy of _hatred_. _

_::Why are you here?:: the Hokou said, expression devoid of interest, after a long moment, its voice the rustling of leaves. _

"_I-" his voice cracked, making him attempt again, "I- I'm here for the girl."_

_::Ah. My little Moriko.:: White ears pricked forward, the Hokou's dispassionate voice continuing, ::You wish to return her to the world of the living?::_

"_Y- yes. The others said that you gave her some information, something she couldn't process. What was it?" Inoichi cringed the moment the last syllable left his mouth, ready to be blown apart in a blast of fire or lightning for his impudence. _

_The wolf's ear twitched. ::There was an illusion, a powerful one, that has accompanied the vessel these past six years. It spanned the Hidden Countries, and the vessel grew used to it, to incorporating it into her conception of the world. Before she spoke her first word, it was there, and she believed it would be there when she died. She grew used to it, always humming in the back of her mind, until it became a part of her world, the bedrock of her perceptions.::_

_Inoichi straightened, feeling braver now that the Hokou didn't seem interested in killing him._

_::But the illusion has been broken, the strings cut, the originator known. The vessel could not understand this change, and so fled here. To me.:: It glanced down at the sleeping girl, eyes flickering with perverse affection. ::To home.::_

"_The originator?" Inoichi shook his head, confused. "What was the illusion?"_

_::A bitter pall cast upon the eyes of the Kages, driving them to imagine Konoha as everything they have struggled against, everything they hate, veiling all avenues of peace from their eyes, casting countries into flame. The originator, a female resting in the embrace of the Land of Rain, burning herself upon the pyre of her last falsehood.::_

_Okay. The Land of Rain was Amegakure, obviously. Now to take Moriko from the Hokou's paws, and flee. Inoichi twisted the mindscape one last time, Moriko dissolving from her position, the limp warm weight of her appearing once more in Inoichi's outstretched arms. He lifted her upright, looped an arm beneath her, her head lolling on his shoulder, breath warm and soft against his neck._

_A memory made his eyes burn: climbing stairs in the dark, Ino heavy and asleep in his arms after he had found her on the couch, some silly children's show still playing on the television. This jinchuuriki in his arms had never had a father to do that for her. No father to cry out, to protest the padlocked shed._

_He raised his eyes to meet the Hokou's, a question rising to his lips, asinine bravery making him speak._

"_Why are you being so… calm? The Kyuubi and Isonade were never this-" he struggled for a word, settling for "-forthcoming."_

_The Hokou snorted, stirring Inoichi's hair in a blast of ozone, smoke, earthy smells. ::The others are unsubtle fools. What entertainment is simply burning people in their beds or watching them choke and die on their own spittle? Far more cunning, more interesting, to turn their minds against themselves: to taste their fear as they wake again and again into a nightmare, always hoping that this time will be reality.::_

_It yawned, the smell of its breath almost… antiseptic. ::But I am not only a creator of illusions, but also the destroyer. It is more entertaining to tear away the delusions mankind veils the world with: to make them understand that they are merely an evolutionary fluke, that there is no higher power crafting them from the clay. They are born, live, and die in a cosmos that has no use for them, and no matter what they do, no matter how powerful they may be, in the end-_

_All human endeavors- science, literature, music, these unending wars of yours- all these attempts at raging against the unfeeling void, at saying 'I mattered'- they mean nothing, will change nothing. The moment humanity first walked blinking into sunlight, it was already gone.::_

_Inoichi shrank back, shaking. The Hokou stared down at him, expressionless. _

_::That is what I did to the people of Moyagakure. They believed that I destroyed the village and murdered the people, when I merely stood outside, tore the veil from their eyes, and watched as they ran rampant, unable to stand the knowledge.:: _

_Something was screaming in the back of Inoichi's mind, a pathetic gibbering of 'I matter I matter I have to matter I cannot be here for nothing we cannot have died for nothing'-_

_The Hokou's eyes burned into him, lips drawing back, teeth larger than Inoichi's head gleaming white. ::Do not worry. I will leave you with your illusions, but always, in the dark of night, in the lightless corners of your mind, I will be waiting.:: Its gaze flicked to Moriko._

_::And one day, when she grows old enough to hear my whisper, the vessel will learn that nothing and no one matters. That she and everything she loves is already dead.::_

"_And then?" Inoichi whispered in a thin, breaking voice. _

_::Then I will be free.::_

'_I matter I am not dead the universe must care' _

_His brain was boiling in his skull-_

'_I matter!' _

_The dream dissolved and Inoichi was left only with the Hokou's eyes._

He opened his eyes to the boiling light of the hospital room, Haruno and Uchiha bending over him from where he laid on the floor.

"See?" Uchiha straightened, glancing at Haruno. "He's fine," he said before disappearing from Inoichi's field of vision. Inoichi's jaw worked, trying to create some saliva to moisten his parched mouth and throat. Rolling his eyes to the side, he could see the jinchuuriki gathered around the bed, Varg cradling Moriko in his arms as the girl rested her hand on his bearded cheek.

"What was the information?" Haruno demanded.

Inoichi stared up at this woman, a hardened killer, and did not recognize the girl he had seen sitting at his kitchen table with Ino, her small feet swinging above the floor as the two of them colored.

So much _time_ gone…

"There's an illusion on the Kages."

Haruno's gaze sharpened, her fists planted on either side of his head. "Yes. What else?"

"The originator is in Amegakure," he croaked, Haruno's eyes widening. She offered him a hand, hauled him to his feet with far more strength than her small frame should hold, and grabbed Uchiha, whispering in his ear. Uchiha's eyes flickered red, beginning to whirl, as he turned to Haruno, questioning, before she nodded and he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Going to warn the Hokage, no doubt.

"Uzumaki," Inoichi staggered towards the blond man, grasping his shirt, the other man staring at him as if he had no idea who he was. "The Hokou. It has a plan to free itself." Uzumaki's hand came up, grabbing his wrist, the jinchuuriki's skin hot, almost burning from the rage of the beast caged inside.

"Varg," Uzumaki called over his shoulder without tearing his gaze from Inoichi's face, "will you take Moriko outside, please? There's a little street food place two blocks to the left of the entrance." The hulking foreigner swung Moriko atop his shoulders, the girl's hands settling in his hair, and thundered from the room, Moriko's laughter ringing out through the halls.

Uzumaki steered him to a chair and pressed him down into it, the other jinchuuriki gathering around him. It was not a position Inoichi had ever wanted to find himself in.

"Talk," Uzumaki said.

Inoichi did.

As his voice trailed away, he glanced around at the jinchuuriki's faces. All of them had some mixture of concern and resignation- except for Riko, but she rarely-if ever- showed much emotion as it was. Uzumaki was the first to move, raking a hand through his hair and letting out a heavy sigh.

"Thanks for telling us, Yamanaka-san."

Inoichi nodded, then ventured, "So… what are you going to do about it?"

Noboru spoke first. "Nothing." Seeing Inoichi start, he hurried to continue, "Moriko isn't old enough to understand the Hokou as it is, and there's no point in telling her."

"There's a fucking huge _point_-" Inoichi roared, the sight of Nii's eyes bleeding black making him quail.

"She is a _child_," Nii said, "and we are going to let her _be_ a child, because although none of us had the luxury of childhoods, we are going to make _damn sure_ that she does. If the Hokou thinks that Moriko resigning herself to nihilism will be enough to free it, it has no idea how wrong it is."

"The best way to allow Moriko to understand the value of life," Riko said, "is to give her a childhood in which to do so."

Inoichi shook his head, sighing. The jinchuuriki were so fucking _wrong_, so blinded by their love for Moriko that they couldn't even see the danger lurking inside her, the Hokou's gaze in her eyes.

Standing, he shoved his way through them on his way to the door. "You're wrong, you know," he said, pausing for a moment. "And I hope to God you realize that your love will not be enough to obliterate the Hokou waiting within her for its chance."

The door swung shut behind him, Inoichi walking through the hospital, unknowing that he was already mumbling to himself, a ceaseless litany,

"I matter I must matter the universe must care we are not dead-"

* * *

Tsunade looked up from her papers as she heard Riko's halting, dragging gait outside the doors of her office. The doors swung open as earth battered them, Riko stumbling inside, her hair a tangled mess. She had grown so terribly thin, eyesockets visible, cheekbones knives pressing against her pale skin. Her lips looked bruised, the manila folder, bulging with papers, clutched in her hands shaking as she shook.

Numb at the sight, Tsunade watched as Riko dragged herself forward, muscular control eroded by the disease.

Riko's hip contacted the edge of a chair, the girl perching on the edge of the seat before Tsunade's desk and slamming the folder down, her words tumbling over each other, as if she was trying to get out the information of a lifetime in the short space she had left.

"Here. A plan. If followed to the letter, it should preserve up to sixty-five percent of your civilian population, more than enough to preserve your culture and genetic stock. I have made the calculations- this is the best we can do at this point. If we attempt to preserve more of Konoha, the lines will fall." Her mouth twisted. "The lines will quite possibly fall no matter what we do, but this is the best route to their preservation."

A strategic retreat from Suna must be made to bring Gaara back, as he is integral to the defense of Konoha from the advance of Iwa; on the retreat, Gaara's forces must salt the earth to prevent Suna from acquiring any more resources. Suna is, after all, resource-poor. While Gaara is on the approach, send two of your deep-cover operatives, preferably Haruno and Uchiha, along with a small strike team, to Suna. Suna's water supplies are limited by the oases in the desert, of which there are few, and the single river that winds its way to the sea. If these oases and river are poisoned- Noboru can supply a poison to destroy crops and people both- the resulting domestic crisis will be so great as to force a temporary retreat to deal with the civilian problem.

Once Gaara has arrived, send him north with Varg, Lee, Hyuuga, and Ame to the Itsuki Pass."

Tsunade glanced at the map- Itsuki Pass, an open space between two mountains, about a quarter of a mile wide. "We'll bottleneck them there?"

"We'll bottleneck their _diversion_ there; they know that we will expect them to head for Itsuki. Their main force will head for the pass over Mount Katsuro instead, as the forests will provide more cover."

The route over Katsuro was more circuitous and would require Kumo to spend two more weeks on the approach compared to the straight shot Itsuki gave, but that would give Konoha time to prepare the defenses.

"So we meet them at Katsuro," Tsunade said, already reaching for the deployment forms.

"No."

"No?"

Riko grinned, and Tsunade got the feeling that this small girl was enjoying the vast sway she held over their strategy. "The Kage and his forces will be at Itsuki. They think that we will expect them to be with the main body heading for Katsuro, but I know that the opportunity for them to punch straight through the Itsuki Pass is too much to give up. Therefore, the forces at Katsuro must be our own diversion; the main body of our Northern troops will be at Itsuki to hold off the Kage and his guards."

"How many at Katsuro?" Tsunade dashed her signature across the deployment forms for Varg, Gaara, and Gai's former team and slid the forms into the outgoing box, reaching for the list of divisions.

"Two divisions."

She froze halfway through her signature on the first deployment order.

"Against Kumo's army? They'll be _annihilated._"

"Yes. The plan requires it. They must hold the summit of Katsuro at all costs for twenty-four hours. While Kumo dashes itself to pieces against the divisions, we will send a small infiltration force around the edge of Katsuro to cut their supply lines. With the supply lines cut, Kumo will be forced to halt their approach for at least three weeks while they reform the lines."

"But- why two divisions?"

"Any less and Kumo will know that they're being played. Furthermore, between fifteen and twenty percent of the shinobi will abandon the cause on the way up and disappear into the forest- cowardice has statistics like everything else. Two divisions will assure that the divisions arrive with enough personnel to make a good show of it. Sending any more would be a waste of life."

As if the deaths of four hundred men for a chance at cutting _supply_ lines wasn't a waste.

Tsunade stared at Riko for a long moment, trying to understand her cold mathematician's logic, the way she had reduced everything to numbers and probabilities, distilling all of life into fact.

Was she even human? Could she be called human when life was nothing more than some endless simulation of numbers to her?

What was she _doing_, entrusting the safety of her country and her people to this twelve-year-old girl that saw the deaths of four hundred men as not only acceptable, but _necessary_?

But as she wondered that, Team Eight's faces swam before her, reporting the story of a boy that died for a country not his own, all for the love of his big brother, all for the belief that Konoha was worth dying for.

Tsunade had no right to question the jinchuuriki's humanity.

She looked down at the lists of divisions ready to deploy, turning the pen in her fingers. How to choose which to send, which shinobi to condemn? How to do it, when she knew that there was no right answer- tears welled thick and sodden in her throat, were choked back down.

She reached out and checked two boxes. One division was led by Genma, the other by Raidou.

'_I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I cannot save you._'

"I'm guessing the plan takes into account Katashi's death?"

She regretted the remark immediately, glancing up to see Riko's tight nod. "Affirmative. There are subsections with changes to the strategy in the case of each jinchuuriki's death; in most cases, the overall strategy remains the same." Riko's mouth twisted in a tremulous grin. "Of course, my death is already factored in."

"And the illusion over the Kages? Have you created a plan for that yet?"

Riko shook her head. "I have not had a chance to factor that in as of yet. I will need more time."

Tsunade stared. How could she not have factored this important information in?

'_But- if the genjutsu is broken, they'll have to end the war. They'll have to see what they're doing and pull back._'

The genjutsu gave her a chance. Send in a small strike team- it would have to be a suicide mission, as there would be no returning from Amegakure- with one of the jinchuuriki to ensure the mission's success. She'd have to decide on a jinchuuriki and team later.

"That's fine," she said, for what else was there to say? Riko was already working herself to the bone to save them, already making the hard choices to sacrifice countless lives for the preservation of a country-

Even her own.

Tsunade had no illusions about the fact that the stress of the war, of the people all around her, of the hate in the streets and the thunder of the guns, was only exacerbating her condition, was only hastening the end.

She was only twelve years old, but beneath that translucent skin stretched tight over protruding bone rested the heart of a hero.

"I'm sorry," she found herself saying without thinking.

"For what?" Riko tilted her head, although Tsunade wasn't sure if the curiosity was honest.

"I'm sorry that we can't save you," Tsunade plunged on, hurrying the words, "I'm sorry that your life is being shortened by trying to save us. I'm sorry I can't do anything to lengthen it, to give you a chance to have children, to write a book, to leave _something_. I just…

I'm sorry."

Riko's fingers twitched in her lap, her head bowed, as if she were hiding tears. "My life has only lasted a little while, but it… it was enough." Her hand curled into a fist as she nodded, voice growing more sure. "It _is_ enough to know that this country will live because of me. That my child will be Konoha, and all its people. That Konoha will live, though I have not."

Tsunade could only whisper, "Thank you."

Riko stilled, then lifted trembling hands to her blindfold, the leather wrinkling as she pushed one side up.

One solitary amber eye, luminous with tears, met hers as Riko smiled, and Tsunade wondered how often this girl had cried for her bitter fate, safe that no one would know the depth of her grief, for blindfolds blocked more than light.

"You are very welcome," Riko said, standing from her chair and pulling the blindfold back down.

The door clicked shut behind her, the rug wrinkled where her thin feet had dragged across it.

Tsunade held that manila folder and stared down at it.

Hot tears dented the paper as she bent her head, wracked with choking, shuddering sobs.

This- this final plan, the salvation of a country- was Riko's sole legacy.

* * *

**A/N:** I love all comments and criticism. All questions should go to the forum in my profile, and don't forget to check out ncfan's story, also linked in my profile!


	34. Chapter 34

_Please tread gently on the ground when all around you earth turns to fire  
Only get a second chance when danger's on the wind  
Because you're lonely in your nightmare, let me in  
Because there's heat beneath your winter, let me in_  
– 'Let Me In' by Duran Duran

* * *

"Ichiro's going to be a _runner?_" Konohamaru rolled onto his stomach, nearly shoving Moegi's boxes of old kunai off the end of her bed. "The kid's so goddamn skinny a good blast of wind'll blow him right out of the trees!"

"Yeah, I know," Moegi's voice echoed from where she was bent halfway inside her closet, digging through boxes. "Mom's been trying to put some weight on him ever since he was born, but he just burns through it immediately. Ichiro's always been fast, 'cause he's so skinny, so they tapped him for the runners a week ago."

"He _does _know the casualty rates for the runners, right?" Udon said from Moegi's bathroom, where he was flushing his sinuses with saline water in an attempt to control his allergies. "It's at least thirty percent, if not more. I mean, the name change doesn't hide the fact that they're still the postal ninja corps, except now they deliver orders. Offensive jutsu were never in their training."

"Ichiro doesn't care. He figures it'll be a good chance to prove himself." Moegi shoved another box out of the closet with her foot. "Especially since he's being sent on the offensive to Mount Katsuro with Genma and Raidou's divisions along with us to relay messages."

"Not that we'll see any action," Konohamaru muttered, sitting up and smearing dirt over her floral comforter as he moved. '_Shit._' Scrubbing at the stain with spit, he called into the closet,

"So what are you looking for?"

"All of our stuff for the offensive's already been shipped out, anyway," Udon said, before he grabbed a tissue and blew. Konohamaru winced at the noise. Udon flushed the tissue down the toilet and came out of the bathroom, taking a running jump to land just beside Konohamaru, who mumbled "gerroff," shoving at him. Udon ignored him totally. Just like the little bastard.

"I'm looking for one of my old flak jackets from when we started out as genin," Moegi said.

Huh? Those jackets were too small for any of them now; once they'd all hit their growth spurts, they went to the armory for new ones every week, or so it seemed back then.

"What you need that for?" Konohamaru asked, making a bid for Udon's glasses. Udon frowned, shoving his glasses up his nose, avoiding Konohamaru's attempt. Moegi made a sound of triumph and backed out of the closet, Konohamaru taking the opportunity to admire her rear. Sure, they were teammates and thus off-limits to each other, but it didn't mean he couldn't look!

Face streaked with dust, Moegi shook out the jacket. "It's for Ichiro."

"Ichiro? Isn't he supposed to get a special jacket from the runners, or the Academy?" Udon frowned, folding his arms across his chest. Scrolls rustled in the pockets of his vest.

"Yeah," Moegi said, gazing down at the green cloth spread out over her hands, her lips pressed together into a thin line. "But they don't make runner jackets s- small enough for him," Moegi whispered, voice thick. "So Mom's going to take this and work on it, strip the pockets off, maybe remove some of the armor plating to make it light enough to qualify."

Silence.

"Oh," Konohamaru said, feeling like a complete and total heel as he stared at that small green vest, crinkled with age, dust spinning in the space between him and it. That vest would be all that stood between an eleven-year-old boy and death.

"They say that he'll be safer in the runners." Moegi looked up, her smile weak. "That he won't have to be in battle, and I guess that's true, but what if… what if they give him information that the enemy wants? He won't know what to do, how to- to stand up to whatever they do to him. He won't be dying… but he'll be delivering death to the people around him." Her fingers tightened in the fabric. "And they'll hate him for it."

"Aw, Moegi," Konohamaru said, for lack of anything else, anything that could comfort her. Reaching out, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her to sit on the end of the bed between him and Udon, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "It'll be okay."

Lame.

It was a totally utterly _lame_ attempt at making her feel better, but it was all he could do.

"I know," Moegi said, but she leaned into him and Udon anyway. "Ichiro's smart, and the fastest kid in the village. He'll… he'll be alright." She nodded, fabric rustling in her hands. "I know he'll be alright."

"And so will we," Udon said from where his chin rested on her shoulder. "We're not going to even be on the front lines; they'll probably just make us pick off anybody that tries to flank."

Konohamaru felt Moegi lean her head, warm and heavy, against his shoulder, Udon's knee digging into his spine, the three of them sitting here together before they deployed, and his heart was full to bursting with love for them.

Ichiro would be okay, and so would they.

He refused to accept anything less.

* * *

Itachi stood in the position Kisame had steered him to, rotating his Akatsuki ring around his finger in a damnable nervous tic he had never been able to break himself of. The smell of salt and blood emanated from his left, where Kisame stood, Sameheda whispering in its bindings, a scratchy rasp of a voice that tugged at the outer edges of his hearing.

"I suppose this is probably about Hidan and Kazuku." Cloth rustled in his ear as Kisame shifted his stance. Itachi made a noncommittal sound, staring into the darkness of his closed eyes.

He was growing so _tired_ of the darkness: it was encroaching on his vision, clouds blotting out patches of the world around him.

He would need to find Sasuke before then, while he still had enough sight to kill him in punishment for his weakness. The memory of his little brother stirred only a vague contempt for the pathetic fool who had been given the power of the Sharingan and yet refused to use it to its fullest potential. He had entertained idle thoughts of Sasuke murdering Uzumaki in vengeance for the Kyuubi jinchuuriki's abandonment, but he knew them for what they were: delusions, idle fancies of a man unwilling to lose the Mangekyou Sharingan, willing to take his brother's eyes in replacement once they attained the Mangekyou.

Unfortunately, even if Itachi implanted Sasuke's eyes, he would be unable to regain the Mangekyou.

He had no one he loved enough to murder for them.

Chakra bloomed around him as the members arrived, two gaps in the circle as wide as oceans. He opened his eyes and saw only further darkness, lit only by the spectral forms of the other Akatsuki.

"Welcome," Pein said, sonorous voice echoing off the stone walls. He sounded almost… ill-at-ease, piquing Itachi's interest. These meetings were often boring, and so Itachi paid little attention at them, but hearing the leader of the most powerful criminal organization on the planet sound concerned was more than enough to draw his gaze.

"This about Hidan and Kazuku?" Deidara asked, rolling a sphere of clay between his palms, the sound of his other mouths munching nausea-inducing.

"Yes. They have neither returned with the vessel of the Isonade nor responded to my requests for information as to their failure. Furthermore, it has become apparent that the vessel of the Isonade has disappeared entirely from the war effort. When I last heard from Kazuku and Hidan, they had spotted the Isonade and Kyuubi jinchuuriki and were about to make their approach."

"Think they're dead, then?" Deidara said, the sphere in his hands morphing into a small sculpture of a bird in flight.

"It would be the logical conclusion that the Isonade jinchuuriki killed them both. However, we have also heard nothing about the Isonade's continued survival: in fact, I sent Zetsu out to discern the situation, as this could destroy our plans." Pain turned to the platform on which Zetsu stood, nodding to him.

"It has become apparent that the jinchuuriki is dead." Zetsu's leaves rustled, the black half's lips twisted in a frown.

A tiny, choked sound from Kisame, one that anyone unfamiliar with the Kiri-nin would not detect. Itachi frowned; the other man had stated more than once in no uncertain terms that he didn't give a damn what happened to the Isonade jinchuuriki.

"And it has also become possible that…" Zetsu hesitated, glancing at Pain, who regarded him with cool gray eyes, before forging ahead, "- the Isonade has died as well. I went up and down the coast searching for a chakra source-" he droned on, but Itachi heard nothing, what little remained of his vision fixed firmly on Pain.

Their leader stood, his arms folded across his chest, without even a twitch of the mouth to betray his feelings, gray eyes as bleak and empty as the echoing houses of the Uchiha that Itachi had left in his wake. He did not look like a man whose dreams had come crashing down around him.

Zetsu's voice faltered, then trailed off, the report delivered.

"I thought that the bijuu were immortal," Sasori said, his voice as dry as the desert he hailed from. He didn't look surprised, but then he never looked like he felt much of anything.

"As did I," Pain said. "I have a good source for information on the bijuu, one who has encountered them and their jinchuuriki before. The source implied that if a bijuu's vessel dies, the bijuu will live on; this idea is upheld by the fact that there have been over thirteen jinchuuriki prior to the current generation, all of whom died without taking the bijuu with them." He turned to Zetsu once more. "You detected no chakra trails or sources that could possibly be from the bijuu?"

Their spy seemed to shrink into his leaves, his demeanor wary. "The only trail I could detect ended at a cliff where a shallow grave had recently been dug: the cliff face appeared to be crumbling from some sort of a tidal wave that left a faint residue of the Isonade's chakra upon the cliff. Upon opening of the grave, there was little demonic chakra clinging to the contents, and no other chakra trails led away from the grave into the sea, as might be expected."

Pain was silent for a long moment, staring into the middle distance in the direction of the giant statue, his eyes unfocused, as if he saw something the rest of them could only guess at- and he might, with the Rinnegan. The other members of Akatsuki were not privy to all that the Rinnegan could do, so it was not implausible.

Deidara cast worried glances around the room, fidgeting. Sasori ignored his partner's distress, seeming comfortable with the silence.

"If the Isonade has died, all our plans will be unable to proceed, much less come to fruition." Pain lifted his head, made eye contact with each one of them: even Konan, who stood, unmoving, at his side. "I trust Zetsu's report about the situation, and as the Isonade is one of the more violent bijuu, it would not fit for this much time to pass without an attack, were it free. However, the death of the Isonade would go against all acquired knowledge of the bijuu and jinchuuriki up to this point."

"Uh, hey, boss?" Deidara took a deep breath, steadying himself, then went on, ignoring Pain's glare at the interruption, "If the bijuu can survive the jinchuuriki's death, why was it so important that we bring them back alive?"

"For purposes of efficiency. It was believed that if a jinchuuriki was injured to the point of death, the bijuu would find take advantage of that weakness to break the bindings and flee. If the jinchuuriki were knocked unconscious but not mortally injured, they and the bijuu within would be easily transportable, rather than allowing the bijuu to escape and thus dealing with recapturing them."

Deidara nodded along, then frowned, scratching at the back of his head. "Okay, so a bijuu breaking out would require chakra, yeah?"

"Obviously," Pain said, his tone making it obvious that he was only humoring Deidara.

"Yeah! So if the Isonade used up all of its chakra…" Deidara twisted to face Zetsu, almost frightening in his sudden focus, "How big do you think that tidal wave was?"

"The cliff was around five stories high," Zetsu answered with dawning comprehension, the two halves immediately engaging in a fierce, whispered conversation.

"The jinchuuriki had already knocked out most of Kirigakure's navy in the battle by taking the form of the Isonade," Deidara ticked off the points on his fingers, "which had to have drained him already, considering he destroyed ten or more ships; he then came back on shore and fought Hidan, which couldn't have helped; _then_ he decides that apparently it's a much better idea to go down fighting and take out Hidan, so he summons up this tidal wave, and if it was five stories tall, that's got to be a shitton of chakra he expended, even considering the bijuu's strength. It's not _impossible_, y'know, that the Isonade didn't have enough chakra to break free and died as well."

Pain stared at Deidara, the blond man wilting beneath that pale gaze, but the leader of Akatsuki showed no emotion about the destruction of his plans. Itachi wondered whether the man even _cared_.

Much like Itachi, the gods had forgotten to give Pain a soul.

"You could quite possibly be correct, Deidara," Pain said. "In testament to the possibility that the Isonade might have passed from this world, as of this moment, we are removing our focus entirely from the jinchuuriki and focusing instead on producing as much chaos as is possible. You will have free reign to do whatever you like, as long as you do not betray Amegakure. "

Sasori's brow rose. "Is this an informal dissolution of the organization, then?"

Pain seemed undecided for a moment, before he shook his head, his face expressionless. "No. It is a formal one. We have achieved our goal of engineering a war so bloody that the power structures of the nations will collapse, even without the jinchuuriki. The conditions we all required to achieve our respective goals have been met: all that remains is for you to reach out and take the opportunity."

"So as of this moment, Akatsuki as a formal organization is no more. We may have failed in our methods, but-" Pain's mouth twitched in something like a smile as the thunder of weapons rolling past filled the room, "-no one can argue that we have failed in our results."

"Dismissed." Pain's form blinked from existence, and after a heartbeat, Konan followed, then Deidara, then Sasori, like lamps being snuffed out at dawn.

Itachi turned, sandaled feet scraping on the stone, and shuffled off the podium, down the long hallway to one of the empty rooms located within the tower where Pain lived. After a moment, he heard Kisame follow him, taking a seat beside him on the old, dying couch, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his hands dangle as he stared down at the floor. Samehada clattered as it hit the wall and slid into the corner.

"I didn't realize that the boy- Katashi- was dead," Kisame said, his tone wondering as he said the jinchuuriki's name for the first time in years. Itachi glanced at him with what little peripheral vision he had remaining, seeing only a blankness on his partner's face, as if he had no idea what to feel.

Perhaps he didn't.

"I wonder if the kid ever figured out that the teeth and gills didn't come from the Isonade, but from his own bloodline." Kisame's shoulders rose, then fell as he exhaled, all the vibrancy seeming to leave him in that one breath. "I know they would've never told him; after the massacre of the clans, it became illegal to claim descent from them, much less manifest bloodlines, and he would've been far too valuable to be executed. Easier to let him think that the Isonade did it."

"Regrets?" Itachi asked, the word seeming like a foreign thing on his tongue. He had never experienced regret: had never felt anything for his massacre of his own blood beyond a sort of quiet, simple satisfaction that he had executed his plan so well. However, Kisame was not him: regret might still be a possibility.

Kisame laughed and shook his head, the grin he shot Itachi sardonic.

"Nah. He was never my son."

* * *

The hospital workers' cafeteria stunk of old food and desperation, blank-faced people milling about, some prodding at their trays of food as if expecting it to spring to life, others shoveling plates of onigiri down one after another, staring straight ahead-

As if the taste could be enough to distract them from why they were here, or what they were doing.

Ino let her head flop forward, digging her fingers into her hair, greasy and heavy against her fingers. She hadn't had a shower in two days, and if she concentrated she could _smell_ her own sweat, even through the miasma of blood and tears that clogged her nose. The dull plastic plate of limp vegetables before her made her want to retch. Weird, that she could stand over the writhing bodies of those she knew, learning to read the progress of war in the names of thunder- Knife Ridge, Snake Pass- scored into their flesh, and yet it was this unassuming plate of food that made her eyes water, acid burn in her throat.

The PA crackled, a voice intoning, "Operating Room Team Six to Operating Room C."

Fuck. There went any chance of her enjoying a meal: not that she was ever going to eat it, but it was the _principle_ of the thing that mattered. She didn't even have her teammates to commiserate with: they were both working under Sakura's father in the mental health ward, since Chouji's weight and Shikamaru's shadow jutsus helped in holding down unruly inmates.

Like it wasn't bad enough that they had to spend their R and R week volunteering at the hospital to learn basic medical jutsu, they couldn't even stay together.

Blowing out a sigh, she grabbed her tray, dumped the uneaten food into the collection box so that it could be distributed to civilians, and put the tray away, heading for the operating room. She sterilized her hands with the jutsu the unsmiling head night nurse had taught her, snatching a pair of gloves from the box by the door and yanking them on as she entered the operating room.

The rest of the team was already gathered around the operating table, bags of whole blood strung on stands above the table in a grotesque mobile. Ino shoved her way through the crowd to end up behind the head surgeon, balancing on her tiptoes to see the patient.

Oh.

It was a struggle to stay dispassionate at the sight of the ravaged face before her. The eye had been- she wanted to say 'torn', but she was supposed to use 'enucleated'- enucleated from the socket, bulging from the crushed cavern. A deep laceration traced diagonally over his face, the skin on the left side of the laceration peeling back, the injury trailing over the jaw, punctuated by a deep red crater over the larynx. A sea of blood welled in the hollow of his throat, bounded by the mountains of his tendons, fleets of shrapnel floating.

"Yamanaka! Take the carotid while Daisuke stitches up the laryngeal wound." The surgeon's hands flew over the boy's face, eyes fixed on the monitors where the pulse flickered up and down in irregular peaks. Ino swallowed the wave of panic that rose up to swamp her, the world seeming to spin around her. _Wonderful _idea; putting her on one of the most important arteries in the body when she'd only assisted on a few vaccinations! She didn't even have any time to protest, so she wove through the crowd to end up on the side of the face that bled most heavily, lips twisting in an involuntary grimace as she stuck her fingers into the open gash, spreading chakra from her fingers to cover the wound, barrier stretching from the ear all the way to the larynx, curving over the jaw.

Shit- this was going to be even harder than she thought- the blood of others, all that kept the boy alive, bashed against the flimsy shield she erected, the sensation of needles driving beneath her nails as the flow pushed chakra back against her making her fingers curl.

Daisuke bent over her, stinking of alcohol, needle and sterile thread in hand, his beard scratching her shoulder even through the scrubs. The sound of the needle puncturing flesh was like a balloon popping. Ino turned away, trying to distract herself from the feeling of blood washing against her fingers, looking down the patient's body.

Her eyes widened. How had she not noticed what the medics down at the end of the table were laboring on? Feet stuck out from beneath the sterile green sheets, feet that barely deserved the name, the skin stripped from the tops, five bones gleaming like the ribs of a lady's fan, the soles-

The soles nearly burned away, the medics taking what looked like a small hacksaw to the remaining skin, a woman slicing off skin for grafts off of his uninjured thighs with methodical precision.

The clipboard holding the patient's papers were hanging on the wall, and there, written in the thick black scrawl of the surgeon, was the name of a boy from her class.

She truly, madly, deeply wanted to vomit.

Agony radiated up into her wrists, refocusing her attention on the gash where her fingers rested. She was not going to let _blood_ beat her, not going to fail in front of all these people, all these medics who expected her to be great at this because she was a woman and had good chakra control-

They'd never asked if she was okay with blood, though, and she was deciding, right now, as of this moment, that she was _not_. She could feel it, warm and sticky, against her fingers, even though she knew that was a logical impossibility, that the chakra barrier over her gloves prevented even one molecule of the blood from penetrating to her gloves, much less her skin.

Waves of heat and frost seemed to crash down on her, internal organs jerking about as if they were on a spin cycle. Her tongue was thick and numb in her mouth, and everything around her seemed to be covered in a rainbow haze, like oil on water, chakra barrier stuttering, beginning to crack.

The sub-commander of the first Iwa strike force's face swam before her, the way she had last seen it: her kunai shoved through the soft plain of his chin, the 'snick' of his spinal cord snapping vibrating down her arms, his expression contorted. He had- had collapsed _forward_, into her arms, and even as she pushed him away he left a trail of blood down the front of her dress, spreading like ink-

'_Oh no. No. No. This is not happening._' Even her thoughts seemed slow, broken, subsumed beneath the thunder of her racing heart. Her chakra shield, weakened, bent and flexed beneath the push of blood, pools of it lapping against her hands, warm even through the latex-

Her knees went out from beneath her.

"Yamanaka?" Daisuke's voice seemed to be coming from someplace very far away, his arm, solid and warm, wrapping around her waist, holding her up. She sagged against him, trying to seem like she had a grip on things when she so clearly _didn't_-

"Ma'am, Yamanaka's having a panic attack." Gloved fingers wrapped around her hands, pulled them free of the sucking wound, Daisuke erecting his own barrier to replace hers.

The surgeon's eyes flashed upward, mask wrinkling as the mouth beneath twitched into a snarl. "Then get her out of here, damn it! That's the problem with letting combatants volunteer: they're always panicking and having flashbacks so they can't be of any _goddamn_-" having given up on the eye, she plucked it free of the ruined socket and handed it off to a medic to bag, "-use to me."

Daisuke took his arm from around her waist and nudged her with his hip in the direction of the door. Ino stumbled towards it, the surgeon's rant following her,

"They should just go to the fucking mental hospital if they're going to panic! I tell you, these veterans, they got no spine for the real dirty work-"

The doors slammed shut behind her, cutting off the hateful words. Ino kept going until her hands hit the opposite wall and slid down it, pressing her forehead to the cold tile and gasping for air, squeezing her eyes shut. She would not give into the flashback. She would not look at her scrubs for blood- she was better than this, better than them, better than that surgeon thought she was-

The flare of agony in her chest dimmed as the iron band of her sudden migraine loosened, and she opened her eyes and stared at the green tiles of the wall, counting them until the harsh rasp of her breathing slowed.

A hand- _enemy-_ touched her back-

She flung it off and whirled, hands already in position for a fire jutsu, mind working overtime to recall entrances and exits, before she let her hands fall as she saw Shinobu standing across the hallway, her hands empty.

Not that that meant much with a jinchuuriki.

"Sorry, Shinobu," she said. Goddamn it. Now Shinobu was going to think she was a freak, which sucked, because Ino _wanted_ Shinobu to like her. Sakura had mentioned several times that Shinobu was a nice girl who could really use friends, and Ino was always up for ingratiating herself with new people: particularly if they could end up saving her ass some day.

"It's okay, really; I've dealt with far worse freak-outs than that on a daily basis since I met the other jinchuuriki," Shinobu said, smiling. Ino made a noise that she thought sounded acceptable and decently sane, but apparently Shinobu wasn't fooled. She took a step forward, cocking her head.

"Is everything okay?"

Ino, staring at her open, honest face, knowing that whatever problems she had were nothing compared to what Shinobu had been living with since she was small, to her eternal horror felt her lower lip quiver. She swallowed and firmed her stance, because it would just be so _gauche_ to break down in the middle of the hallway. "I- yeah. Yeah. I'm okay."

Shinobu frowned, glanced up and down the hallway, and offered a hand, pulling Ino to her feet. "Come with me."

Ino, too tired to protest, followed her down empty hallways to a room marked 'linen closet.' Okay… was Shinobu going to bestow a feel-better gift of a fuzzy blanket on her or something? The jinchuuriki unlocked the door and ushered her in, turning on the lights and illuminating a small hot plate and kettle on the floor, boxes of tea leaves stacked beside it.

"Tea?" Ino asked, plopping down on the floor and leaning back against a stack of pillows as Shinobu closed the door behind her. "What, you've got some incredible secret recipe that you have to hide from the rest of the employees?"

Shinobu looked blank.

"That was a joke," Ino clarified.

"_Oh,_" Shinobu said with an expression of dawning comprehension. "No, it's nothing secret; the leaves are just things Noboru's picked up over the years. He spent most of his life alone in a swamp, so he's had time to work on creating the perfect cup of tea." She busied herself putting the kettle on and crumbling the leaves into the wire tea ball. "I just keep it back here since employees aren't supposed to bring outside food and drink in, and we don't have many boxes of Noboru's swamp tea left. I have to save the rest of it; it keeps me awake during sixteen-hour shifts, and we're just going to get more of those."

"Sorry about not getting the joke," Shinobu finished, hunching into herself like she thought Ino would be _angry_ or something stupid like that. "Since K- Katashi died, I've been… a little bit lost." The kettle whistled, Shinobu pouring two cups of tea and passing one chipped mug to Ino, who took it gratefully.

"I understand completely," Ino said, a little hurt that Shinobu could think her so insensitive that she felt the need to _apologize_. Still, she was a jinchuuriki, and the Konoha-nin had figured out quickly that the jinchuuriki's formative years had not been pleasant. "After my mom died, it took a couple weeks before I was able to even talk to anybody."

Shinobu gazed at her over the edge of her mug, open and friendly and somehow everything Ino had missed, everything Sakura had left behind in her mad quest for Naruto. "I hope you can talk to me. If you don't want to, I understand-" the shadow that passed behind her eyes only confirmed to Ino that Shinobu knew all too well what it felt like to be unwanted, "-but I want you to know that…" she took a fortifying sip of tea, "I'm always willing to listen. If you need me to."

That simple, honest offer did it, broke her down and left her naked and shaking under Shinobu's gaze. Ino's lips wobbled as she stared down into her tea, and she was unsurprised when several hot drops fell into the rich, dark liquid. Ino rubbed at her face with her free hand, knowing her skin was blotchy, her eyes red and swollen with crying, her nose bright, but somehow she couldn't muster the vanity to care, because the pain in her chest was too great.

She tried to laugh, hiccupped instead, the sound morphing into a sob.

"I don't know. It's just that ever since the war started, I feel-" she closed her eyes against the bitter warmth of tears welling, "-so useless."

Shinobu took another sip of tea, unruffled by the fact that Ino was unburdening herself all over someone she'd only really known for a few minutes. "Why do you feel useless?"

Ino let her head fall back against the pillows, opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling, the pale green of a new iris, and wondered why she had ever become a shinobi.

"I-" She sniffled, coughed, tried again, "I can't _do_ anything. I've got the Body Possession, but that's useless in open warfare, and I can heal, but Forehead Girl's better at that than me- the bitch," she muttered without rancor, "-and all the others are being sent out night after night while I stand in the hospital and try to save people and end up failing half the time. And I mean, the Body Possession's a great talent, but-"

Shinobu's lips curled into a sly grin, the kindly eyes somehow changing, and Ino, watching her, could see Hachibi's sixteen eyes looming in the brown depths, cold and merciless through the steam.

"Everyone has talent," Shinobu said in a voice that rumbled with the eight voices of the dragon, "The question is how far you are willing to go with that talent."

* * *

It was easy to find Yugito after Kakashi heard the news; all he had to do was head for the graveyard. The only illumination in Konoha's streets were starlight and moonlight, the paper lanterns doused for the night and the lights of the houses and apartments turned off to conserve power. He'd been lonely: post-missions always left him so, and while normally he'd find some willing shinobi loitering outside the Hokage Tower looking for the same thing he was and take them home for a night, tonight was different.

Still, although he'd expected to find Yugito here, he hadn't expected to see this.

She was sitting beside a grave, hands wrist-deep in the soil, black fire that somehow was darker than the night sky above twisting around her head and arms. The bones of a child sat across from her, mirroring her cross-legged position.

His heart crawled up his throat, chills seeping into his bones as the skeleton lifted a hand in his direction. A greeting from Death itself.

Sensing his regard, Yugito's black gaze flicked to him, the fire animating the child's bones disappearing, the bones collapsing back into the grave with a sound like the beating of branches in a storm. She was dressed in casual clothing- an old T-shirt for a board game parlor in Kusagakure that Kakashi knew for a fact had closed down ages ago and ratty sweatpants- which made the whole scene even worse.

Somehow she was still beautiful.

"Hatake." Yugito's eyes cleared, pale blue emerging from behind black, and she stared at him with neither interest nor dislike. She didn't even look like she'd been crying, although her voice was shredded. "Why have you come?"

Disregarding the lack of an invitation, Kakashi picked his way around the graves to take a seat beside her, propping his elbow on his knee and leaning his chin into his hand. He didn't really know how to broach the subject. All he'd known, once he heard that the boy was dead, was that he had to check on Yugito: because although she regarded him as a nuisance she was required to keep alive, she was his teammate.

"I heard the bad news." The minute the words left his mouth, he winced internally. Smooth move, Hatake.

Yugito didn't stiffen, didn't glance at him: gave no sign that she had even heard him. Her voice, when she spoke, was flat and dull as unsharpened iron. "And do you care that Katashi is dead?"

That gave Kakashi pause. Sure, he cared in the same disconnected way that he might care about any Konoha shinobi's death: a sort of sadness that his country had been weakened by Katashi's death, heightened a little by his comparatively young age. Nothing personal, though; not the bone-deep sadness that came from losing an Obito or a Naruto. He hadn't known Katashi well enough to be truly saddened by his death.

"I… didn't know him well enough to grieve him personally."

Yugito's cheek twitched as the fire on her skin subsided into nothing. "At least you're honest. Better to admit that you mourn lost strategic value than people that never knew him weeping about how they'll miss him when he never even said a word to them." She shifted to glance at him out of her peripheral vision, the twist of her mouth into a sneer a white knife in the gloom. "So why come find me? Were you _concerned_?"

Her bitterness wasn't even a defense mechanism, a cover-up for secret vulnerabilities. It was just who she was, and so there wasn't any point in being upset about it.

"You're my teammate, and I like to make sure that my team's stable."

One side of Yugito's mouth lifted in a grin. "Just like you made sure Naruto was stable?"

He should've expected that, but it didn't make it sting any less.

"I know I made mistakes with Naruto, and I've wanted to apologize every day since he left for not checking up on him more often." His smile was self-deprecating. "At least making sure he ate something besides ramen. Believe me, Yugito, I acknowledge my mistakes; denial is never a skill I've been very good at."

How could he deny his mistakes, when they were etched in a black granite memorial for all to see?

Yugito shifted beside him, the soft cloth of her shirt brushing against his arm, goosebumps left in its wake. She seemed content to sit there and say nothing, gaze fixed on the paltry pile of bones before the headstone. Kakashi shivered, the darkness and the late night chill and the oppressive aura of the graveyard settling in his stomach, in his chest, cold and leaden.

"What were you doing with those?" He nodded at the bones, the skull with hollow dark eyes, the subtle curves of the pelvis.

Yugito sighed beside him, fire carried on her breath to lick at the bones. The pale forms rocked back and forth in the dirt, but subsided as Yugito made an irritated noise and muttered,

"Shut up, cat."

She'd been talking to the _Nekomata_? Kakashi shifted away from the bones, then flushed at her amused glance.

"Sorry."

"Unnecessary, but accepted." Yugito cracked her neck, then turned to him. "You are correct in your assumption that I was conversing with the Nekomata. It's severely limited in its manifestations in the physical world; the only way it can interact with our plane of existence is if I allow it possession of a body."

"Possession? Can all bijuu do it?" Was it possible for a jinchuuriki to be possessed by their tenant? He'd have to keep a closer eye on them all if that was the case.

"Theoretically," Yugito said, busying herself with tearing handfuls of grass up and shredding them between her fingers. "If a jinchuuriki's seal is weakened enough, or a jinchuuriki is tricked into giving their tenant free reign, the jinchuuriki's body will be possessed and the jinchuuriki's consciousness obliterated by the demon." She dumped the grass shreds on the ground before and started piling them into a mound. "The memories of the jinchuuriki who released their demons in the Village of Shadows made the experience to be much like dying: a mind being snuffed out like a candle flame."

So many questions boiled inside him, about why they'd made that choice, how she perceived their memories, but the one that won the battle was,

"Would you ever give the Nekomata control?"

Yugito's considering gaze bored into him, as if she were deciding whether or not to remove his head from his body for his impertinence. She tilted her head in silent thought before saying with an air of complete finality,

"No. Never."

"Why not?" Okay, he knew he was pushing it, but this was the most forthcoming Yugito had been since he met her; her answers to his questions were normally monosyllabic and given with a feeling of annoyance. Maybe Katashi's death had forced her to lower her emotional walls a bit?

"I… don't _fear_ death," she said after a moment spent gazing at the waning moon, her hands picking at her bandages, "How could I fear it when I've spent most of my life as its incarnation? I may not know what's behind the fog on the other side of the river-" she stopped again, then began, the words seeming to take ages to leave her lips, "-but nothing I've seen in my years as jinchuuriki has led me to believe that it's a cruel fate, or that there's any value in resurrection. I wouldn't give myself to the bijuu because I was frightened of dying and thought that it could save me, because there's nothing to be saved from."

"Besides, I know the Nekomata. I know what it can do; what you saw me do with the bones of the Uchiha is nothing compared to an army of thousands of dead soldiers who know no fear." She smiled, but there wasn't any joy in it. "If I were to release the Nekomata in its full glory, it would require at least one of the other jinchuuriki to allow themselves to be possessed by their bijuu, and that's-" her inhale crackled with something that made Obito's eye itch with sympathy, "-not a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Ever."

The words she used gnawed at him: 'incarnation of death' made it sound like she thought that she _was_ dead, like she was cut off from every living thing, whether plant or beast, that covered the earth.

"Do you… consider yourself alive?"

Yugito started to unwind the first layer of bandages around her thin arms, letting the rough cloth run through her fingers. "I used to. Not anymore."

"What changed?"

"I realized that the emotional spectrum I'm capable of experiencing is nothing close to what others experience. They have a rainbow of love, humor, affection, sadness, anger, joy, while I-" her smile was a quicksilver shadow flickering over her face, "-live in black and white. Anger at everything that breaks my contentment and contentment when I am without stress are the whole of my spectrum. Even with Katashi," she twisted the undone bandages through her fingers, avoiding Kakashi's eyes, "-I didn't feel grief when I heard the news. I still don't."

Kakashi lowered his gaze at her words. How terrible, to be so limited, to exist in a constant state of rage brought on by the slightest change.

"Anger, then?"

She nodded, and her litany came out in a rush. "Anger. At him for being so _stupid_ to die in the first battle of the war; at Naruto for not saving him- though I know how hard he tried-; at myself for failing to protect him though I promised the jinchuuriki I would be the first to go; at death for taking one of the few people in this world that was capable of bringing contentment by his presence."

He hadn't ever thought that there could be this much fire beneath her cold exterior: this much boiling fury. Now that he knew it, so much of her behavior made sense: her bitterness, her coldness, the insane joy she took in battle, because battle was the only place her wrath could find full expression.

"There can be something else besides anger," he said, remembering a young boy who had watched his best friend die and been consumed by it, who had gone into ANBU in an attempt to assuage his pain, only to learn that ANBU, just like anger, could consume you if you let it.

He had.

Her laugh clawed at his hearing. "What? Love? Empathy? If you think I value those things, if you think I'm _capable_ of understanding what they mean, you haven't heard a damn thing I said."

"I think love's always a possibility, but not for people like you and I," he shot back, only to find himself bowled over onto the ground as Yugito shoved him and climbed on top, straddling his chest, grabbing his wrists and slamming them to the freshly turned earth. Shock ran cold and horrible over his skin, radiated from her touch, dug into his body. Her fingernails dug into his wrists until the blood flowed, her mouth twisting in a horrid snarl at his hiss. Black threads clawed outward from her pupils, spread to cover her eyes as he stared in horrified fascination, blood, inky in the moonlight, streaking her lips, falling from her mouth to puddle on his chest.

It froze where it touched.

Fire poured from her skin to rip at the earth around them, the sound like the snapping jaws of a thousand rabid wolves, raced up the trunks of trees like ink without leaving marks behind. Kakashi twisted, tried to get his hands into position for a jutsu- why had he trusted her? Why had he thought that being teammates meant a goddamn thing to someone like her?- but Yugito shoved his arms back to the ground.

The world burned around them in black and white.

"I'm not-" Yugito bent close, and her breath smelled like rotting flesh, "-_like_ _you._ Don't even _compare_ me to something that I have _no hope _of knowing!"

Kakashi stared into her eyes, paralyzed by the hate he saw there, a hate that had burned her alive and hollowed her out into a shell of a human being. Yugito's ink-black eyes bored into him, and he wondered what she saw: if he was marked by his mother, dying to give him life; his father, dying because he believed in the concept of a team; Obito and Rin and Yondaime.

"Love is something for people who are alive- love is for people who have something to give, something of value besides their body-"

"I have nothing of value," Kakashi said, "except my teammates and an eye that's not mine."

"Teammates?" Her laugh made the fire respond in a hiss that seemed to shake the world. "You call me a teammate? Something of value for something beside my power?"

He couldn't value her for anything beside her power: Kumo had made it so, had turned her into a vessel of power without conscience or care. He knew this and didn't care.

"No, but I've learned that someone willing to stand beside you when all else falls is the only thing worth having, and you're-" his smile burned him, "As much as I hate to say it, you were assigned to me, and you're all I've got."

Her face froze into a mask of wrath. "Don't! Don't _value _me at all."

What had the world done to her, to make her so furious at the prospect that someone might care?

"Yugito-"

She plunged forward and smashed her lips to his in a bloody kiss that served to shut him up with a flood of warmth, and when she pulled away, her eyes still yawned black. "You- you anger me, with your idealism, your belief that love- that _good things_ are still possible- you _enrage_ me and I can't- I can't _kill_ you because Naruto says I can't, that you have to live because he loves you, but I- I want to _hurt _something, someone, you-" she bent closer, "-and I _can't_-"

"Kiss me again," he said with a twisted smile- a kiss could hurt him more than anything physical, could maim with the knowledge that it was all he would ever have of anyone, that he lacked the capability to give or be given anything more. She reared back, gaze darting over his face, searching for falsehood, and that momentary shock allowed him to yank a hand from her grip and get it up to cup the fragile curve of her skull. She shuddered beneath his touch, and this was nothing like any love he'd ever known-

He leaned up, his captured hand splayed in the dirt, to kiss her, slanting his mouth over hers, the taste of the blood on her lips going unnoticed. She responded for a moment, her lips softening beneath his, before she snarled into his mouth and shoved him flat again, her hand coming to his throat.

"What-" she loomed over him, growling, the fires about her rising up in columns of darkness like a temple.

"You want to hurt me?" he snarled right back. "Then spend the night with me."

A night that would mean nothing, that would only prove to him over and over again that he wasn't capable of anything but empty sex, that Yugito wasn't capable of love, that humanity had succeeded in breaking the both of them into shiny façades with nothing inside. The two of them clawing at each other, using each other for warmth and meaning that had died long ago, until emptiness was all that was left. She would use him for something to hurt; he'd use her to pretend that life still held warmth; and the using couldn't even demean them, because there was nothing to demean.

She tilted her head. Darkness faded into blue; fires disappeared and left the cemetery as it had been; she emerged with her lips curled in a smile that chilled him to the bone with its seeming normality.

"Okay," she said, and pushed herself to her feet, waited for him to get up, dusting himself off, and followed him out of the cemetery, her bare feet leaving dirt stains on the pavement. They walked in silence through darkened streets lit by moonlight without touching, a parody of lovers. Yugito didn't look at him, didn't speak; she walked at his side without hesitation, blue alien eyes gleaming in the light, and stared straight ahead into the darkness.

At the apartment, Yugito waited for him to unlock the door and strode inside without so much as a by-your-leave, taking in the one-room flat, bereft of decorations, with a glance.

Kakashi finished locking the door and turned around to find her already undressing. She pulled her T-shirt off over her head without fanfare, unwound the wrappings on her forearms, and stepped out of her sweats to stand, naked and without shame, in the middle of the room. Her skin was knit together with scars: a pink knife wound curling across her ribs; a puckered white patch of burn scarring mapping the expanse from hip to sternum; last and most damning, ladders of silver lines marching up her forearms.

She watched him as he stripped, without approval of his physique or condemnation of his scars, and then stepped towards him and pulled him down into a kiss. Kakashi closed his eye, his hands coming up to span her shoulders, the ridges of her shoulderblades pressing against her skin into his palms. He felt her walking him backwards, the carpet change to tile beneath his feet, and opened his eye to find himself standing in the bathroom, Yugito turning the shower on before returning to him and shoving him straight back into the spray.

She followed.

There were no more kisses, no more pretensions or falsehoods.

They slid together in the shower, her shoulders against the tile, her hair all about them in a curtain of sodden gold, and Kakashi's arms slid over her scar-slick skin, biting at her mouth- frantic and savage and lost, their teeth clicking together, and the scalding water falling over them couldn't ease the frigidity inside- as her fingers curled into his skin, her legs squeezing his hips, something like pain.

They could taste each other's tears on their lips.


End file.
